Feb 11, 2003
Thinking Out Loud: Why Did a Plastic Fetus Elicit Such Outrage?
A. BARTON HINKLETIMES-DISPATCH STAFF
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Delegate Richard Black produced the intensity of reaction he perhaps wanted last week when he mailed small plastic fetuses to the 40 members of the State Senate. Along with the fetuses he sent a letter asking, "Would you kill this child?" Abortionists, he wrote, "kill most babies at this stage of development," and he added some graphic descriptive language about what happens in an abortion.
If Black harbored the foolish hope that he would change the minds of lawmakers who do not share his anti-abortion views, he surely was disappointed. Those who vehemently oppose abortion seem epidemically tone-deaf in this regard - witness the anti-abortionists who display posters with photos of mutilated fetuses in public; even those sympathetic to their cause take offense at their tactics. Several lawmakers took offense at Black's. State Senator Leslie Byrne called the mailing an "assault on the decorum of the General Assembly" that created a "hostile work environment." Senate Minority Leader Richard Saslaw said those who received it were "pretty repulsed."
The interesting question is: Why?
POWERFUL, often discomfiting or disturbing imagery is used in advocacy all the time. Charitable organizations broadcast images of emaciated children to encourage contributions. Health organizations publicize pictures of rotted gums and burnt-out lungs to discourage tobacco use. Animal-rights organizations disseminate images of animals tortured in scientific experiments or cruelly confined in factory-farming operations. Those opposed to war promulgate pictures of war's horrific consequences: Look what Lyndon Johnson did to Barry Goldwater with a negative ad showing a mushroom cloud. Those hoping to inform and enlighten the public about genocide show pictures of corpses by the hundreds.
News organizations actually hand out awards for disturbing or discomfiting images. Recent Pulitzer Prizes for spot-news photography have gone to those who captured on film the September 11 attacks, the aftermath of the Columbine shootings, the embassy bombing in Kenya and Tanzania, the conflicts in Rwanda and Burundi, and so forth.
On the other hand, there is a line almost no one crosses. Human-rights activists have publicized the barbarity known as female genital mutilation - but not with photographs. Children's advocates fight child abuse and child pornography - but do not broadcast images of children being violated. The savages who beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl made a videotape of the act - but the media did not play it. (Ms. Byrne says she could "send around gory photos of women before Roe v. Wade" - but she won't.)
Black's little plastic fetus, however, does not rank anywhere near such material. It is not a grotesquerie. It looks nothing even like the photos of aborted fetuses on anti-abortionist posters. Asked why the innocuous thing gave such offense, Ms. Byrne says Black should have given "some thought to what [such a package] does to the staff" who open the mail. She objects to Black's use of inter-office mail, saying he should have delivered the object in person instead of taking "the cowardly way out." Which does not really answer the question. And given the tenor of this year's session, her complaint about assaulting the decorum of the Senate sounds a bit like "Fear Factor" host Joe Rogan defending the dignity of the contestants. (Saslaw did not return a phone call.)
Advocates use props all the time to underscore points at the Assembly. A few days ago a lobbyist for the Restaurant Association brought a bottle of liquor and a gun to a committee hearing, and no one said boo. So again - why the bitterness over a plastic trinket?
HERE'S A GUESS.
Pro-abortion advocates cloak their arguments in the language of choice, and defend women's autonomy - "Keep your laws off my body." (This column's policy view on abortion resembles that regarding gangsta rap: It's something difficult to abide but wrong to outlaw.) The more extreme activists will not even use the term "fetus," but refer merely to the "product of conception." Feminist author Naomi Wolf, writing in The New Republic some years ago, asserted that "many pro-choice advocates developed a language to assert that the fetus isn't a person, and this, over the years, has developed into a lexicon of dehumanization." For this she was nearly read out of the sisterhood. Pro-abortionists seek to minimize as much as possible any discussion of what, precisely, is being aborted. Solzhenitsyn called such behavior in another context "the desire not to know."
Yet pro-abortionists can't hide the truth - especially today, when ultrasound can give the expectant mother a picture from inside her womb. And sometimes, by accident or design, they acknowledge the reality of abortion, as when Planned Parenthood's Grace Sparks said women who have chosen abortion "have made an incredibly difficult decision." The statement constitutes an admission that "keep your laws off my body" does not cover the moral complexity of the situation. There's another body involved, and that's what Black's little plastic fetuses make graphically clear.
But do legislators need graphic reminders? (Planned Parenthood's former lobbyist Karen Raschke used to think so; she was rarely seen without a small gold coat-hanger dangling from her necklace.) Black said that in sending around his little plastic fetuses, he was merely giving his colleagues the truth. "I want each one of them to know what they are talking about when they talk about killing children," he said - as if none of them ever had taken a health class in school, or had been pregnant or fathered a child, or had given any thought to the subject at all before receiving his mailing.
In short, Black delivered a truth that some find uncomfortable, that a few have a strong investment in not acknowledging - and that everyone already knows. Unlike Pulitzer Prize-winning photos, his dolls offered no new insight, information, or understanding. He condescendingly acted like Moses bringing the tablets down from Mount Sinai, when in reality he was a tardy mailman bringing yesterday's disquieting news. The result was to generate a great deal of heat, but no additional light.
RTD