A house divided
By Gualberto Garcia Jones, Esq.,— Those who support abortion are increasingly more willing to believe a Hollywood-fiction portrayal of things that will never come to be, instead of the reality and brutality of abortion. This substitution of intellectual honesty with uncritical party loyalty bodes badly for America. For as President Lincoln stated, quoting the Bible, a house divided cannot stand.
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The Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets frequently show pictures of pro-abortion protesters dressed as characters from The Handmaid’s Tale when covering news about pro-life legislation. To the secular “progressive” left, which includes almost the entirety of the mainstream media, those who are working to protect pre-born babies from an early violent death are seen as a cabal of misogynistic, totalitarian, fundamentalist Christians who view women as nothing more than incubators. Gone are the days of liberal pro-lifers like Nat Hentoff, who sadly passed away in 2017.
Clearly, The Handmaid’s Tale is a case of art imitating life, albeit from a distorted progressive perspective. While there may be some token Catholic persecution thrown into the mix, the story of the Handmaid’s Tale is really about “sexually liberated progressives” fighting against repressive Christians. The story is meant as a cautionary tale of what would happen if Christians won the culture war, but it’s really just more proof that there is an increasingly insurmountable chasm between the worldviews of an ever-more polarized nation.
Do these progressives really think that the same people whose children play on their children’s sports teams, shop at the same supermarkets, practice their professions, and live in the same communities are hell-bent on subjugating women?
I actually think they do, and the possibility that I am correct is a scary one for our country, especially because much of the conservative side feels the same level of animosity towards the progressives.
Last year, I attended a town hall meeting where one liberal progressive after another voiced the most despicable dehumanizing rhetoric imaginable about children in the womb. I remember leaving the town hall meeting close to being in a state of shock. I am a patriotic person and am grateful beyond measure for the opportunities that this country has given me and my family, but if the measure of a country is to be determined by the character of its people, we are in deep, deep trouble. I remember leaving the meeting feeling that I would surely have more in common with someone in a foreign country—a political enemy of the United States, like Iran—than with the liberal progressives at that town hall meeting. I wonder how long a nation where people feel this way about each other can remain united?
When I say both sides are horrified by the other, I don’t mean to equate them. No Christian man that I know wants to subjugate women. On the contrary, the more devout the Christian man, the more he honors, respects, and cares for his mother, wife, and daughter. Are there Christian hypocrites who do not practice what they preach? Of course! The point is that evil ideologies are real, and one of the most evil is alive and well today in America. Abortion is the result of an ideology that seeks to elevate the personal liberty of one person over the right to life of another, weaker person. This is evil, pure and simple.
There is an objective truth, which any child can understand. It takes a net of lies and self-deception to mask that truth, making evil appear to be good and good, evil.
Take for example the oft-repeated assertions that women who have miscarriages will be criminalized by anti-abortion laws. There is not a single case in the history of the United States where a woman who lived in a state that prohibited abortion was imprisoned for a miscarriage. There are, in fact, exceedingly few cases where the woman was even investigated. In those cases, the investigation was as a result of a reasonable suspicion of gruesome infanticide, and never because of a natural miscarriage. Yet, these lies continue to be peddled as if they were true.
What if, instead of showing pictures of pro-abortion protesters dressed as fictional oppressed characters, the media showed pictures of the victims of abortion? What if, instead of talking about tortured, implausible interpretations of how pro-life laws could be applied in a hypothetical future to deny women their rights, the press showed what abortion is, and what abortion has done, and what abortion continues to do every single day to countless little people?
Nobody likes to see pictures of the victims of abortion, just like nobody likes to see pictures of the victims of the Nazi holocaust, but both are necessary—the first to appeal to people’s innate conscience to stop a great evil taking place right now, the latter to prove and remember what was done and never do it again.
I challenge every abortion advocate and supporter to look at the pictures on this website and see the victims of abortion as people deserving of our love and protection. This care and protection of the innocent pre-born child does not require anyone to stop being a liberal, just read Nat Hentoff’s experience. And it certainly doesn’t require anyone to trespass on the rights of women. Read Susan B. Anthony’s writings on abortion. But what it does require is for people to stop being creatures of political ideology; to think for themselves outside of the checklist that goes along with their party affiliation.
I challenge you to apply the concern for the weak and the oppressed that is the cornerstone of every well-intentioned liberal pursuit to the weakest and most oppressed people in the world—the pre-born. If you do, you will be able to build bridges to conservatives on a host of other topics that are the proper subject of policy discussions and politics.
Unfortunately, those who support abortion are increasingly more willing to believe a Hollywood-fiction portrayal of things that will never come to be, instead of the reality and brutality of abortion. This substitution of intellectual honesty with uncritical party loyalty bodes badly for America. For as President Lincoln stated, quoting the Bible, a house divided cannot stand. Lincoln’s statement is as pertinent today with regards to the evil of abortion as it was back in the summer of 1858 with the evil of slavery.
A house divided against itself, cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.
The Personhood movement will not cease fighting against the evil of abortion until all human beings, born and pre-born, can enjoy the equal protection of the law.
Gualberto Garcia Jones, Esq., is the president of the Personhood Alliance and a licensed attorney in the commonwealth of Virginia. He is a human rights advisor to the Holy See Mission to the Organizat
ion of American States and works in Washington DC to stop the expansion of abortion in Latin America.
Very good ( but sad ) article. I agree with everything you wrote; and it looks like to me that we are headed for a division, at the least. The pro-aborts will not give up their “right” to kill their own children, no matter how many facts are presented to them. That’s the sad part. However I will read the Nat Handoff experience, and possibly use that info in my next debate.