Raisin' and Falling (Excerpted Section on Abortion)

OpinionJournal.com ^ | April 29, 2004 | Peggy Noonan

[litany_of_lies]

PEGGY NOONAN
'Raisin' and Falling
A 40-year-old play reveals something awful about today's culture.

Thursday, April 29, 2004 12:01 a.m.

Every now and then you witness a small moment that is actually a big moment. Maybe it alerts you to something surprising that's going on, or maybe it illustrates what you already know but in a new way, one that can't be dodged or avoided.

It happened to me the other day at a play, a press preview of the Broadway revival of Lorraine Hansbury's "Raisin in the Sun."

SNIP

But I must tell you of the small moment that was actually a big moment. (There's a possible spoiler coming up, so if you don't know the story and mean to see the play, stop here.) An important moment in the plot is when a character announces she is pregnant, and considering having an abortion. In fact, she tells her mother-in-law, she's already put $5 down with the local abortionist. It is a dramatic moment. And you know as you watch it that when this play came out in 1960 it was received by the audience as a painful moment--a cry of pain from a woman who's tired of hoping that life will turn out well.

But this is the thing: Our audience didn't know that. They didn't understand it was tragic. They heard the young woman say she was about to end the life of her child, and they applauded. Some of them cheered. It was stunning. The reaction seemed to startle the actors on stage, and shake their concentration. I was startled. I turned to my friend. "We have just witnessed a terrible cultural moment," I said. "Don't I know it," he responded.

And I can't tell you how much that moment hurt. To know that the members of our audience didn't know that the taking of a baby's life is tragic--that the taking of your own baby's life is beyond tragic, is almost operatic in its wailing woe.

But our audience didn't know. They reacted as if abortion were a political question. They thought that the fact that the young woman was considering abortion was a sign of liberation. They thought this cry of pain was in fact a moment of self-actualizing growth.

Afterwards, thinking about it, I said to my friend, "When that play opened that plot point was understood--they knew it was tragic. And that was only what, 40 years ago." He said, "They would have known it was tragic even 25 years ago."

And it gave me a shiver because I knew it was true.

Lorraine Hansbury died in the mid-1960s when she was only 35 years old. She didn't know how things would turn out. She didn't know that a poor family that is also a nuclear family would seem exceptional, that a young black intellectual could indeed become a person of substance and respect, a doctor, and that this, 35 years later, would not seem unusual. That the struggle for racial equality would also be a long one, with many twists and turns.

She would be surprised perhaps by how some of the dramatic themes she introduced played out. The whole play is about moral choices--taking chances to make things better. She had a moral mind. She thought the great question of her time was whether the different races in America could learn to treat each other with justice and grace. I can't imagine she'd guess that members of an eager audience in the year 2004 would have become such moral dullards that we wouldn't understand something as basic as an abortion, and what it is. If she were alive now I wonder if she would be surprised, or shocked, that that moment no longer worked as a dramatic plot point because the audience had changed so much in its understanding of the basics.

So much progress followed the 1960s, in so many ways, but applauding abortion isn't progress. It's ugly. And I'm writing this with an odd little hope. That you might go see this great play, and when the moment comes that the young woman announces she might end the life of the child she is carrying, that you would sit quietly and think about what that moment means. And if anyone cheers or hoots or hollers, give them a look. Let them see your silence. Lead with it. Help the people around you realize: Something big is being spoken of here. And we know what it is. And it is nothing good.

[litany_of_lies]

What a poignant and sad story. The pro-life community indeed has its work cut out for itself, despite recent favorable developments.

[litany_of_lies]

Pro-Life Ping Suggestion.

[cpforlife.org]

Pro-Life Peggy Noonan PING

[Notwithstanding]

Protect your kids.

Make sure they are morally strong and healthy

before

you expose them to small doses of moral disease
for purposes of innoculation.

Woe to you if you expose them before their moral immune system is fully developed...

[cpforlife.org]

Peggy is one of my favorites. She hits home like few can.

Very "poignant" indeed.

[Soundman4x4]

Peggy had a similar cultural moment with her friend. Last time it was after she went to watch taping of a Michael Jackson special.

Later, as we got into a cab, we said nothing. It was odd to go from such sound to such silence. But we were both pondering.

It wasn't that any individual moment during the evening was so stunningly bizarre. (Mr. Brando, for instance, was only as bizarre as Brando is.) It was that taken as a whole the night yielded an unmistakable sense of decay and disorder. "I feel like we are witnessing the end of our culture," I said.

"We are," he said. "It's a freak show now. The whole thing, it's just a freak show."

Two-and-a-half days later came 9/11 and the ending of a world. When my friend and I talked again he said, "Remember that night? You could see it coming then."

http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/22Sx/PnSx/SuprBwlNoonan.htm

[cyn]

Indeed! Peggy Noonan goodnight bump.

[DestroytheDemocrats]

It is scary. Some Democrats have truly gone over to the dark side and they think it is the light.

[cgk]

Pro-life ping... pro-baby ping... (pro-PEGGY ping!)

[cgk]

This is P. Diddy's Broadway debut play, isn't it? Typical.

[TheMole]

It happened to me the other day at a play, a press preview of the Broadway revival of Lorraine Hansbury's "Raisin in the Sun."

Emphasis added by me. Everyone in the audience was there on a press pass.

[BfloGuy]

I'll admit that sometimes I find Peggy Noonan's work to be "syrupy".

But, this is excellent (most of her work is excellent) and this becomes "Email Forward" material.

[nickcarraway]

BUMP

[CalifornianConservative]

Still, Noonan's point is chilling. We've GOT to take back our media from the Commiethink automatons. Hitler Youth was scary, our modern media is a horrorshow.

[Aquinasfan]

They heard the young woman say she was about to end the life of her child, and they applauded.

They need to see the pictures of the dismembered babies.

[TigersEye]

Abortion is not about saving women’s lives!

Total Abortions since 1973
44,670,812

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why the drop after 1960? (in deaths of women from illegal abortions)

The reasons were new and better antibiotics, better surgery and the establishment of intensive care units in hospitals. This was in the face of a rising population. Between 1967 and 1970 sixteen states legalized abortion. In most it was limited, only for rape, incest and severe fetal handicap (life of mother was legal in all states). There were two big exceptions — California in 1967, and New York in 1970 allowed abortion on demand. Now look at the chart carefully.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abortion Statistics - Decision to Have an Abortion (U.S.)

· 25.5% of women deciding to have an abortion want to postpone childbearing

· 21.3% of women cannot afford a baby

· 14.1% of women have a relationship issue or their partner does not want a child

· 12.2% of women are too young (their parents or others object to the pregnancy)

· 10.8% of women feel a child will disrupt their education or career

· 7.9% of women want no (more) children

· 3.3% of women have an abortion due to a risk to fetal health

2.8% of women have an abortion due to a risk to maternal health

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So how many women’s lives have been saved by abortion?

Only about 3% of abortions since 1972 were reported to be “due to a risk to maternal health.” A reasonable person would recognize that not all of those cases represent a lethal risk. But let’s say they did. That means that nearly 45 million fetuses were butchered to save the lives of about 1.3 million women.

Abortion was legal in all 50 states prior to Roe v. Wade in cases of danger to the life of the woman.

[TigersEye]

The Planned Parenthood Conspiracy

(the racist beginnings of the "pro-choice" movement.)

Finally, Margaret Sanger and her organization began to be primary sponsors of abortion rights during her lifetime. But because she had associated herself with Adolph Hitler, praising him for his racial politics of eugenics, she changed the name of American Birth Control League to Planned Parenthood during WWII in order to disguise her racist past. (13) Today, her organization, Planned Parenthood, is still in the forefront of advocating abortion as a means of eliminating the unwanted and "unfit."

[litany_of_lies]

"a press preview"

Nice catch. Missed that.

These are the people we depend on to give us what's going on in the world straight with no filtering--fat chance.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Mr. Silverback]

Once again, the pro-aborts cheer on a sacrifice to Molech.

ProLife Ping!

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