Or: how I think Josh Brahm is influencing me for the worse.

I dropped my cell phone under my bed late last night. The combination of my disability, short arms, and the wall it was wedged against made me unable to reach the phone. I tried using a few ordinary household items to pull it up – a pair of scissors and two or three coat hangers (all different kinds). One of the coat hangers eventually worked, but not before my … unconventional? … and sleep-deprived brain conjured up images of said object as an icon for the pro-abortion cause. Inevitably, the first thing to come to mind was the publicity of Gerri Santoro’s tragic end. (I won’t bother describing it or linking to photos here – it’s very graphic. If you’re truly curious, Google will be helpful.)

I started thinking about how awful it is that needless deaths are used to promote social causes, among both sides of the abortion debate. The seemingly endless coverage my fellow pro-life advocates gave to Tonya Reaves was equally unnecessary and uncalled for.

I am an activist. I can see how “beneficial” it would be for “our side” to have an example – someone whose story proves that only the middle part of the “safe, legal and rare” slogan contains much truth.  However, I think the approach that was taken did not give Ms. Reaves’ family time to grieve before launching her story into the spotlight. My first suggestion would be to wait until a certain amount of time or a milestone in the resulting court case had passed. That said, I’ve considered two possible and unintended consequences of that delay: the abortion industry could destroy patient records or other related evidence, and it might not be “newsworthy” if initial coverage begins so late after the fact. There may be more. It really was, and is, a Catch-22.

By now, you’re probably asking what Josh Brahm has to do with any of this. Simply put, I want to have all my bases covered. Someone out there will read this post and say “So, you’re concerned about showing these two women to the public, but not the graphic photos of abortion victims you display on sidewalks regularly?” The theory and philosophy I’m about to get into reminds me of Brahm’s work, though it is nowhere near as polished and well-tested.

First, which is worse: the fact that someone’s mutilated body is being displayed or the existence of the body in the first place (i.e. the fact that someone died of unnatural causes)? I hope most people would say the latter, and agree with me that the best way to “avenge” a senseless death would be to ensure there are none like it in the future. Abortion pictures are the most effective way to do this. They bring a hidden injustice to light, leaving no room for people to avoid the brutality and lethality of abortion. An abstract “choice” is revealed as something concrete: the violent and premature ending of a real human life.

Second, Ms. Santoro and Ms. Reaves both enjoyed something these children never had. This quality could be described in a few ways. It is similar to, and could fit alongside, the “future like ours” argument described at Secular Pro-Life.  I prefer to call it a “story” or “identity.” If asked, you could probably describe something about these women despite only “knowing” them through posthumous media attention. They were someone’s daughter, or sister, or friend. They belonged to a certain ethnic or cultural background, or other community. They went to school somewhere, and went on to work somewhere else. Most of all, they were members of the human family.  

This membership can tell us a few important things about the person who possesses it. These children – and all people – are and were loved. They deserved that love. They deserved to be treated with the dignity. Finally, their lives have value. It is important to note that we “gain” these things simply by being what we are: human. If we know something about a person, it is much easier to mishandle that knowledge or somehow dishonour their memory with it. Most of my reluctance to talk about Ms. Reaves is tied to this risk.

In contrast, what do we know about the people killed by abortion? We might know their gender, who their parents were (and thus, some of the communities they would have belonged to), their age at the time of death … but not much else. We do know that aborted children, like all human beings, are members of the human family. They should have received all of the “benefits” that come with inclusion in this family. Since they cannot, we must do the next best thing and prevent other children from losing theirs.

Taylor Hyatt, a former summer student at The Interim, is a regular contributor to Soconvivium.