Photoshopping a Fetus: Denying the Obvious
It's hard not to blame the influence of technology for the seemingly inexorable spread of the culture of death. Accurate and safe prenatal testing has led to the destruction of an estimated 90 percent of unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome. Sonograms reveal that the sex of yet-to-be-born children has led to a "small-h" holocaust against girls in places such as China and India, where boys are often preferred.
But technology can also be a huge advantage in the fight to recognize and protect the sanctity of human life-every human life. For example, pro-lifers have worked diligently to place sonogram machines into pregnancy care clinics, and the presence of these high-tech wonders-which clearly show the humanity of the fetus-has no doubt contributed mightily to a substantial drop in the abortion rate, as well as a marked increase in the percentage of Americans who consider themselves to be pro-life.
It seems that our technological prowess doesn't so much corrupt our hearts as reveal what's in them.
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You can see this principle in action in a recent article in Slate magazine. The writer, Allison Benedikt, recounts "the latest in baby-making fads," such as midwives and birth photographers. But what really gets her attention: "Pregnant woman are Photoshopping sonograms onto their naked stomach glamour-shots."
Imagine Demi Moore's famous Vanity Fair cover pose with a representation of the growing human life inside her for all to see.
For Benedikt, such uses of technology are troubling-even "bad for women." She writes, "… the more we treat fetuses like people-including them in our family photo shoots, tagging them on our Facebook walls, giving them their own Twitter accounts-the harder it will be to deny that they are people when the next, say, personhood amendment comes up, with legislators and activists arguing that 'the unborn child' inside a pregnant woman's womb should have the same rights as the living among us."
In other words, don't believe what your lying eyes tell you about fetuses, because if we start viewing them as people, those mean ol' anti-choicers might start demanding that we treat them that way.
This approach to the unborn-"nothing to see here, folks, just move along"-says so much about the pro-choice worldview. But it gets worse. Writing about the recent congressional debate over sex-selection abortion, instead of bemoaning the elimination of millions of future women, Benedikt urges pro-choicers to embrace sex-selection abortion.
She writes: "No matter how many ultrasound pics get posted to Facebook, these are fetuses with female genitals or male genitals-not little girls and little boys. If pro-choicers object to aborting because of the sex of the fetus, aren't we then saying that abortion is 'murdering' girls? . . . That is not the case to make if your goal is to protect abortion rights. Gulp for a second if you must, then get over it." Wow!
Chuck Colson always said that "worldview matters." And to judge the validity of any worldview, follow it to its logical conclusion. Thanks to Ms. Benedikt and those like her, the pro-choice worldview's logical conclusion is there for all to see: In order to maintain the supreme good of a woman's choice, pro-choicers must always and everywhere deny the humanity of the unborn child.
Even when their own eyes tell them otherwise.
