The Buried Truth

My 11 year old son is very talented at drawing, and my husband and I thought of furthering his skills by enrolling him in art camp.  We had high hopes of having him bring home beautiful detailed paintings–after all, his pencil drawings at home were quite impressive – incredibly detailed, imaginative, and usually done from a 3-D perspective.  He came home the other day with multiple paintings and I thought they were still beautiful (and we told him so), but I was also shamefully and secretly  disappointed.  Upon close inspection, the beautiful intricate pencil-drawn details of a truck driving away from an exploding volcano, the planet Earth being hit by an asteroid, and a flashy sports car on a bridge were obscured by thick paint that bled into each other, and created muddy patches that took away from the splendor of his work.  The beautiful intricacy of his drawing lay buried under multiple layers of paint laid by clumsy and untrained brushstrokes.

While art and the controversial issue of abortion are topics that are unusually discussed together, the obscuring of my son’s drawing by unflattering colors literally painted a metaphor for the buried single truth in the muddied picture of abortion. This has been discussed and debated from political, religious and multiple empowerment advocacy standpoints that we are left with a messy, gray, and miserable painting of abortion, completely blind to or distracted from the basic truth of life in the womb.   Let us not even give it specific labels such as cells, embryo, fetus, baby, or child, given the potential “loaded” connotations associated with each of these terms.  But can we all agree that pregnancy represents life in the womb? After all, it wouldn’t be called a pregnancy if there wasn’t. Science dictates that an organism with its own unique set of genetic material with the capacity for growth, reproduction and functionality is indeed life. Life is life, no matter where it is in its stage of development, and to say otherwise is pure ignorance, outright denial or delusion.  There exists no truth more basic than this, and yet this is a scientific truth that we are either blind to, or choose to ignore, whenever we advocate for the choice of abortion.  Modern medicine prides itself and rightfully insists on basing health care, diagnosis, treatment and prognostication of disease on scientific, unbiased evidence, that it is incomprehensible how it has allowed core medical knowledge to be ignored, and for confounding bias to intrude on its objective ground. Stripping the act of abortion of politics, religion and other swirling colors of discombobulating bias reveals its basic nature.  Abortion is the intentional destruction of life.

Introspection of the issue of abortion requires shedding political labels of right or left, putting down alienating religious convictions or condemnations, and facing the downright basics. Ask any young child devoid of these biases about abortion – the willful removal of human life from the womb resulting in its death – and you will receive a definitive answer that it is wrong. If one feels uncomfortable asking a child about abortion, this just further validates the point; The situation is simply hypothetical (I am not suggesting that you talk to a 5 year old about abortion), but it is brought up to emphasize that willful ending of an innocent life will always be held to be wrong, if presented without bias. Humanity binds us all, and at the core of it, our innate moral compass points to the defense of life as its true north.

It is truly a myopic view to use abortion to solve a problem; Abortion is merely a symptom of a bigger problem. Resorting to destruction of innocent human life represents ultimate desperation of the human race, and is simply a symptom of the multiple festering illnesses of our society. Rejection of scientific truth, distortion of basic morality, and justification of taking the life of our own indicate overwhelming social and cultural disease that needs to be treated. We need to rethink abortion. We need to protect our own and attack what truly threatens us and our humanity.

We can pile on thicker paint in an attempt to beautify the art of abortion. We can only pile it on so thick. The advancement of healthcare and our society as a whole cannot proceed for as long as we deny basic truths. the question is: Wherein truly lies our fight? The battleground has become bloody and we have lost sight of our real cause.

There is no call for judgment, there is only a call to see truth. Truth is unchanging. It can be obscured, attacked and denied, but it remains the same and eternal. We all deserve to see it, as this is the only suitable foundation for genuine empowerment. The truth of life is in the heart of humanity, but protection of life is what defines humanity.