Those who are kind enough to read that column may have noticed that every now and then I break out in “people” I think the reason is that I am temporarily pragmatic. When I come across a complicated machine I do not ask, “How does it work?” but simply, “Does it work?
While, I am convinced that the world needs ideals. I find it difficult to cope with them in the abstract. But when I meet an ideal clothed in flesh and blood and pulsing with life and laughter. I find it irresistible, [Now read on].
Somewhere in New Jersey, U.S. there lives a lady named Jean Garton, Litt. D. L.H.D. She is the wife of a Lutheran clergyman and the mother of four children. She serves on the Lutheran Board of Public Relations and it’s National Social Concerns Committee. She gave testimony before the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives on a Human Life Amendment. In 1978 she was numbered among the “Ten Most Influential Lutherans in the United States” She is also the author of an excellent book entitled Who Broke the Baby., which gives very convincing arguments against abortion in a very readable way. So she does not seem to be your ordinary “Jane Doe.”
An unwanted pregnancy
In the preface of her book, Jean gives a capsule form, the story of how she changed from being pro-abortion to being pro-life. Her fortieth birthday was approaching and she was facing it with anticipation. Her three children were at school, bottle and diapers belonged to the past and she had decided to begin an exciting new life. She was going to do all of those things that she have been prevented from doing as a mother with young children. And it was all going to start when the celebrations were over.
Then she discovered that life had begun—but it was not her life. A new life had begun to grow within her. She was pregnant again? She describes it as a very “unwanted” pregnancy. She was angry and frustrated. It was so unfair. After all those bottles and babies, surly, she deserved a break and a little bit of freedom? What about her rights as a woman? She probably even wondered if there was Anyone Upstairs?
This was all before the U.S. Supreme Court had given America abortions on demand and, being the wife of the clergyman, she was not going to tangle with the law. So, in her anger, she joined a group which was endeavouring to liberalize the abortion laws.
At the meetings of this group, indoctrination into the language of abortion formed the basis of many of the sessions. The first principle was, “never accord humanity to what is in the womb.” Call it, “a blob of tissue” or “the contents of the uterus” or “the product of conception.” Call it anything you like—as long as you don’t call it a “baby” or a “child” or anything that would suggest the “it”” is a human being. Stress the “woman’s right to choose” and at first Jean lapped this –up. But not only is Jean very intelligent, she is also very sincere and she began to feel increasingly uneasy with these false semantics, which, while being effective and persuasive lacked integrity.
But she was not going to surrender too easily her objective of widening the scope of the law, so she decided to dig more deeply. She spent many months in study and research on the whole question of unborn life. She read law, medicine and history. She delved into Scripture and the writings of the Church fathers. She says “I worked long and hard to find evidence to support the theory that the unborn is not human—and found none.”
In the end, Jean says that she was metaphorically carried kicking and screaming into a pro-life position by the sheer weight of scientific evidence. Language is the agent for change and when language lies, when words are warped and twisted. Perversely, they are eventually emptied of their true meaning. In the words of Jean Garton, “the linguistic deception of the pro-abortion argument tells it as “is isn’t”
Jean concludes this part of her story thus. The unwanted, unplanned pregnancy resulted in a very wanted and loved child. Thos who expressed sympathy at any after forty pregnancy cannot begin to appreciate the special joys and blessings which come to mature mothers. And life did begin at FORTY when I acquired a new and wise teacher in the form of a little boy who taught me that life is really all about>”
Jean’s book is certainly worth purchasing and reading. It can be obtained by writing to Bethany Fellowship, Inc., 6820 Auto Club Road, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55438.
But if you do not get it and read it, don’t ell anyone that I filch a lot of my ideas from a book written by the wife of a Lutheran Minister!
