It has become common practice that when someone wants to hide something, they use words which have no clear meaning.
The phrase “call a spade a spade” can mean many things to many people. To a poker player, it may mean that someone has colored a club to look like a spade, and is claiming to pass off their hand as a flush. To Plutarch, in his “Apophthegmata Laconic,” where the phrase is first discovered, “…to call a fig a fig and a trough a trough,” possesses little resemblance to the phrase we have today. But, in short, we have a long history of the metaphor “calling a spade a spade,” and a longer history of difficulty with “calling it as it is.”
In today’s case, “it” refers to a child.
THE ABORTION DEBATE
On the 46th year anniversary of Roe v. Wade, New York passed the most sweeping legislation on abortion—allowing abortion up until birth. According to Leana Wen, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, “courts can no longer be a reliable backstop to anti-reproductive health politicians.” Abortion advocacy groups have therefore focused on pushing legislation at the state-level in 25 states, anticipating the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
However, nothing is more sickening than to see New York City’s Freedom Tower lit up pink to celebrate New York’s abortion bill. It is sickening because the celebration for killing children at the top of the Freedom Tower, is instead soberly memorialized at its base. Etched into the 9/11 memorial fountains are the names of 11 unborn children of expecting mothers who died. 11 children who, if they had not perished in the Trade Towers and instead perished inside a Planned Parenthood facility, would have been stripped of their rights as children and their names forgotten.
2019 sees 25 states seeking to pass favorable abortion laws and seven states to pass laws restricting abortion with fetal heartbeat bills: 32 states this year. As we continue into 2019, we should reconsider the main arguments for why a pregnant woman is an expecting mother.
KEEPING THE MAIN THINGS THE MAIN THINGS
There are two arguments we should consider. First, the case for life. And second, the implications of that case.
Scott Klusendorf, president of Life Training institute, has a simple argument—an argument we could all remember:
- “It is morally wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings.”
- “Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being.”
- “Therefore, abortion is morally wrong.”
The abortion debate does not begin with circumstantial questions such as economic viability, personal convenience or quality of life. The debate begins with the question, “At what point is it a human being?” The answer is “at conception.” According to a Senate Subcommittee report, “Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.”
And second, consider the implications of Klusendorf’s case. When we call a child a child, the implication is that a whole slew of arguments are revealed to be tangential to the main case for life. Phrases such as “woman’s health,” “reproductive rights” and “deeply personal” are no longer sufficient reasons for terminating a child’s life, but instead are recasted in new light.
The conception of a child is not an individual act, but a joint-act. We may grant that sex is deeply personal, but conception is deeply parental. It is not merely a woman’s health that is at stake, but also the health of a child. And the fight for “reproductive rights” is not the fight to take life, but the fight to protect life—the right to reproduce, if all suspicion is to be removed, is the right to reproduce human life from human life.
WHAT ARE WE HIDING?
2019 is the year we “call a spade a spade,” and protect the life of the child. But, to borrow a line from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, let me tell you a story.
Imagine a pregnant woman decides she wants an abortion. She’s driven down to an abortion clinic. After her abortion, she walks out and sees another pregnant woman crossing the parking lot. She screams at the woman, but is too late. The pregnant woman is struck and killed by a drunk driver. He is charged with double homicide.
Why do we live in a world in which the woman who has an abortion is treated as one life, and the woman who does not have an abortion is treated as two lives? What happens during the abortion? I believe we know the answer, but we are refusing to “call a spade a spade.” We are refusing to call the child a human life.
