Expanding the discussion started by catholicvote.com

By Daniel Kane, Institute Fellow*
DATE: February 10, 2009

*Father Thomas Berg, will resume his column in a few weeks. In the interim, please enjoy the weekly essays written by guest columnists for "With Good Reason."

The CatholicVote.com presidential video that went viral recently really hit a nerve and is a stroke of genius. Most have seen the video of the moment. It begins with a high definition ultrasound image of a child in-utero. Symphony music cues and rises as the image of the child is magnified to nearly the full screen; bringing into focus the brain, a beating heart, a recognizable human profile. Not yet born, we learn this child is bearing the crosses only a child can bear - a broken home, paternal abandonment and the struggle of single mother hood. The stirring music reaches a crescendo and we learn that this child, in spite of such hardships, ascends through life to the Oval Office, becoming the first African-American President of the United States. The video ends with the tagline, “Life Imagine the Potential.”

This is a great work of contemporary media communication art, merging seamlessly the irony of the present adulation of a man whose birth did not in the least telegraph his future success and whose race is aborted at twice the rate of its presence in the population. The ad ran on BET (Black Entertainment Television) several times on Inauguration Day, and was recently featured on the O’Reilly Factor.

Whipping around the web, many shared their adulation with a pithy, relevant pro-life message in the mainstream media, a media uniformly hostile to a pro-life viewpoint. Ironically, we can see how the media was trumped; out- maneuvered by a nimble and articulate group that shares our perspective. The commercial gives a stirring and hopeful argument for life by featuring not only the person of the moment, but the putative leader of the free world. It adroitly places in perspective President Obama’s precarious beginning as an unexpected biracial child within a courageous, single teen-aged mother in 1961. Sadly, many with similar beginnings have come to premature ends, but in this case, “hope” prevailed.

The video definitely rides our present fascination with the virtue of hope; extrapolating it to its earthly end - life. It is on the crest of the wave that is popular culture right now, with a firm and undeniable counter-cultural perspective. This is the greatest pro-life media coup in years, if not decades, on the darkest pro-life day in years, if not decades.

We now need to expand the conversation a bit on the sentiment of the video: Abortion is not wrong because it may kill a future President, Nobel Prize winner, captain of business or artist of note. If it were limited to that, what then, are we to do with those who are certainly crippled, lame or likely to be objectively costly to society?

The value of a person’s life is in life, not in the real or imagined contribution that individual’s life makes to society. The value of a person is never found in their real or imagined future acts, but in their inherent dignity as simply persons, members of the human communion.

Imagine for a moment, we replay that commercial in our minds. Same first class footage. Same stirring music. Same intrauterine crosses. Instead of our President, we see a criminal, committing all sorts of mayhem his whole shattered life from the very beginning to his final incarceration. Mayhem in your neighborhood, maybe even your home. His contribution to society is destruction; his material value is in the red. At the end of his life, in a prison hospital, convicted of only a fraction of the crimes he actually committed, he repents on his death bed and in his final moments, his sins are forgiven and the criminal is received into everlasting life.

Reliable sources inform me that when this occurs, all of Heaven rejoices. Such is the economy of God’s grace and mercy. Such is the manifestation of the virtue of hope within life and for life, no matter how vile the actions one misguided life may undertake, or how heavy the cross is given to one who may have not yet grown arms.

We need to expand the discussion and not be driven by sentimentality or trapped into an argument based on real or imagined future acts. Sentimentality and utility are arguments we can not prevail with over the long haul because while sometimes accurate, they are not always true. The argument that will prevail is that all persons have a right to life simply because they are persons worthy of love. This right lies inherently within the dignity common to all people. The right to life stems not from what one does or becomes, but in Whose image one was created.

Abortion is wrong, not because in 1961 a future President was spared an abortion by a heroic mother and laws that protected his life. Such an argument does not advance the sentinel premise: abortion is wrong because it kills an innocent child.

May this President, who rose above discrimination based on the color of his skin, graduated from Harvard Law school, and reached the highest office in the land carrying the crosses handed to him in the womb of his mother, make a priority the protection of those children who are similarly discriminated against, carrying crosses identical to his own.

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Daniel Kane is an Institute Fellow and Special Assistant for Operations at the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person.