On The Nature of Grave Historic Evils

The Abortion Doctor: Hero or a Criminal?

As I’m sure everyone knows, abortion is a complicated and divisive issue. Is an abortion doctor a hero or a criminal? Some would say a hero, others a criminal.

Now, I am of the opinion that up to a point reasonable, decent people can disagree on this issue leaning to one side or the other and still remain reasonable, decent people. There is a point earlier on in pregnancy at which the question of whether or not it is a baby being killed is far more ambiguous. There is also a point later on however where the question is not at all ambiguous. I hope we can all agree that at least once a fetus is unambiguously a fully formed baby, that violently ending its life for no reason beyond “personal choice” is gravely evil, even if you believe it is a choice a woman has a right to freely make. If we cannot agree on that, well, I’d at least encourage you to read the next few paragraphs.

Not too long ago I read an article published in the Boston Review called ‘Why I Perform Abortions‘. In this article by Dr. Christine Henneberg defends her pro-choice position and describes a normal second trimester abortion which she typically performs several times a day:

“On a recent afternoon in my clinic, fifteen years after the earthworm experiment, a young medical assistant named Jenny approaches me between patients. “Can I show you something?”

She pulls up an ultrasound video on her phone: a fetus, its perfectly formed limbs, fingers and toes, squirming and jumping in its wedge-shaped sonographic window, bounded by the fuzzy, white-gray walls of a uterus.

“Awwww! Adorable!” I look at Jenny; she is beaming. I have known for some time that she is pregnant. (She occasionally asked for my advice during the eight months it took her to conceive.) “How many weeks are you now?” I ask her.

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen weeks! Wow! Look at that little baby. So cute!” It wasn’t long ago that I was pregnant with my own children, gazing lovingly at their ultrasound photos.

The demographics of our clinic closely reflect those around the country: most patients are low-income. (In California public health insurance pays for abortion care.) The vast majority of my patients are in their first trimester, but I typically perform a few second-trimester abortions each day. Later that afternoon, Jenny assists me during a fifteen-week procedure. The fetus on the ultrasound screen looks just like Jenny’s, in every recognizable, perfectly formed detail: fingers, toes, beating heart. But this image is very different because of the context in which I am viewing it.

The woman is lying on the table, awake but sedated by medications. I dilate her cervix and place a small plastic tube inside her uterus. I watch the ultrasound screen. I flip a switch; a humming noise fills the room. At this instant, the fetus seems to jump as though startled; then it squirms in the tight, already shrinking space of the uterus. It continues to move in this very human, baby-like way until the last instant, when it is overpowered by the force of the vacuum and sucked through a plastic tube, whisked out of the uterus and into a glass jar in a rush of blood. Gone.”

The same horrific scene of another conscious, fully formed human fetus apparently fighting for its life during a second trimester ultrasound guided abortion was witnessed by Abby Johnson, one of the most prominent pro-life activists today. It’s actually what led her to quit her job as a Planned Parenthood director and switch sides on the issue. What was horrific and clearly evil to Abby Johnson upon first witnessing is just business as usual for Dr. Henneberg who wrote the article quoted above, and for countless other abortion providers.

What is so perplexing about a great social evil that it blinds the perpetrator to the fact that what they are doing is evil at all? Or society at large? How did I once so ardently close my mind to the ethical concerns of the “other side” on this particular issue? That is for another article. But Dr. Henneberg could easily share a Facebook post remembering the Holocaust and fail to see the irony.

Even more perplexing, others will read the section of the article I emboldened for emphasis and come to the opposite conclusion. Instead of being horrified they will say: “this is actually something good that should be celebrated, and allowed at any point and for any reason”. At most they would admit the tragedy of the situation but still defend the necessity of allowing it. They might even call the doctor a hero or a saint for providing such a “necessary service”.

How can this be?

Social Evils Portrayed As Good or Necessary Historically

The perpetrators and defenders of nearly every great social evil throughout human history genuinely believed they were doing and defending a great social good. Think about that, they did horrendous evil and thought were genuinely, completely convinced that they were doing great good. Terrorism, human sacrifice, slavery, genocide, etc. The perpetrators all thought they were doing good! All of them. There are too many examples to count: Aztec priests, Nazi concentration camp guards, Rwandan Hutu extremists, Bolshevik Checkists, American slave masters, etc.

The value system of their times, their cultures, they all lauded them and what they were doing as good, as necessary, sometimes even as heroic. We look back on them today with eyes of clarity and disdain. And it’s tempting to ask: can we really blame them? Can we say they didn’t know any better? Of course we know their guilt was real. They are guilty as charged. They really are guilty, because on a certain level, they knew. And you can say “but this” and “but that” but on a certain level you know too. The most terrifying thing is that for most of them, those who were the actual perpetrators of these great social crimes, it only took a split second decision to damn them.

No matter the external circumstances and social forces, in almost every case there was without doubt a decisive moment in the heart of every perpetrator, a moment of clarity where they really saw the ugliness of what they were doing, or of what was being done by their friends, to that person or group history remembers as the victims of these great social crimes. Do you think. Dr. Hanneberg had no stirring in her conscience the first time she saw an unborn baby that was about to be killed moving as though startled, squirming away from the instrument, moving in a panicked but very human, baby like way? But she didn’t listen to that voice, even if it was screaming at her: “THIS IS WRONG.” Do you think an SS soldier really felt nothing the first time he saw a child shot dead? But they persisted.

Their natural and, perhaps only initial, reaction of horror, sorrow, disgust, etc. was in fact the only defensible response to what they were witnessing. Their first reaction to the horror was the most accurate precisely because their hearts had not yet been hardened by the persistence of their wills to do evil. But they are guilty precisely because they made a decision not to listen to that little voice telling them that this was wrong. It was a decision they only had to make once, a decision that in most cases decided the fate of their souls, an upward or downward spiral continuing ad infinitum from that moment onwards. And the deeper you sink the harder it is to turn back, the greater grace is for those who do.

For those who are guilty, it was, really was, their choice. They chose hell. They could have walked away, they didn’t. There are definitive moments in one’s life where their true character is truly tested. Second chances here are rare. A man throws up after witnessing a family murdered in cold blood by his brothers in arms. His heart is on fire with guilt. Does he leave them? Refuse to fight with them any longer? No, he continues with them. Eventually he participates in the atrocities himself. It gets easier the more he does it, he’s sinking lower into hell and he thinks this is somehow good. Because as ugly as it is, he’s doing it for some alleged greater good. Perhaps he even convinces himself that his acquired hardness of heart is a virtue— what folly!

They are guilty because they decided to kill their hearts in regards to one’s being harmed by their actions: the one they did not even consider. It was that initial choice they made in their own hearts that ended up damning them. Before anyone else was killed or enslaved or victimized the initial sin was first and foremost in their own hearts. They saw first that the fruit was good for food. They ate the apple, they chose the lie.

These were, I must stress, in every meaningful way ordinary men and women. They weren’t monsters motivated by malice itself, far from it. Paradoxically and terrifyingly their humanity itself is what motivated them more than anything else to persist in their evil. They thought of the good of another person or group, usually their own, that was benefiting by their heinous actions. They often thought of this person or group with genuine compassion and empathy, and to the other, the victims, with cold indifference and dehumanization, perhaps even hatred.

They loved their friends and families, they did not however love their enemies. Fear often played a role in their black and white view of the world. They did not love their neighbor. They did not love the ones they hurt. They loved so much so they often did all this for those they loved— so there would be a good harvest, so they would not have to grow up in a world with capitalists, or Jews, or unwanted babies, or what have you. Out of love they sent millions of innocent to their deaths. Why should they ever consider the victims when their mission is so great and noble a cause?

“Don’t be sentimental, gods must be fed, there must be a good harvest.”

But my God, the innocent children you sacrificed!

“These people are animals, parasites, the work has to be done, they cannot be allowed to pollute future generations.”

But my God, these were once your neighbors and friends that you now kill!

“These are enemies of the people comrade, we have no choice, a revolution is not a dinner party.”

But my God, how many innocent people did you kill?

“The economy would completely collapse if we set them free, they are a brutish animal race anyhow of an inferior intelligence, it is only natural and right that they serve us.”

But my God, you’ve terrorized and killed millions of innocent people!

It is a clump of cells, a fetus and not a baby, and even if it was, it’s their body and their business period.

But my God, they’re killing a fully formed baby just because the mother wants it dead!

And do they care? Do the objections of conscience move them to repentance? Of course not. They make excuses. They deny the sin of their crime. More than this, they proclaim their wicked acts to be good and necessary. And that is how history ought to remember them also, as the wicked lot they are. This is, sadly, how history will remember Dr. Henneberg and those like her.

Even when the whole world said to them, “this is good”, they are still without excuse. Because they did not listen to that little voice inside them that said, “this is wrong, the world is wrong.” For such has it always been, and they who persist in such evils will be held to answer for it.

If you do not listen to your conscience when it first accuses you, soon you won’t be able to hear it at all. You will become blind first to your sin, and then to your own blindness. Take care then to listen to your conscience when it first speaks to you. And seek to rouse it up if you know you have silenced it by repeated injuries. This is a Grace. Long for it, pray for it, seek after it. If you do not know if you have done such a thing, ask that it be made clear to you. It is very difficult but with God all things are possible. I myself can attest to this. For as long as we are still breathing, even the most hardened of hearts can come to true repentance. Pray that they will also.