What Is Truth?

On October 9, 2009, the New York Times published an article entitled "Abortion Foes Tell of Their Journey to the Streets." It is a well-balanced and fair piece written by a reporter, Damien Cave, who had covered the murder of pro-life activist James Pouillon and attended his memorial service in Owosso, Michigan. Indeed, the main problem with the article is one over which Mr. Cave had no control: The Times, like many other newspapers that support abortion on their editorial pages, eschews the use of the term "pro-life." Thus, the pro-life movement is referred to throughout Cave's article as the "anti-abortion movement," and pro-lifers are called "abortion foes" or "abortion opponents."

Many pro-life bloggers and the websites of pro-life organizations regarded the article as something of a coup: A 2,200-word article on the front page of the New York Times is sure to be read and discussed across the country (and around the world). Part of the excitement, however, came from a companion article, published only on the "Lens" blog of the New York Times' website.

Also written by Damien Cave, "Behind the Scenes: Picturing Fetal Remains" is the first serious and extended examination in the mainstream media of the use of graphic images of aborted children in pro-life protests. The practice is increasingly popular—though, as I have noted before, it is still controversial even among pro-lifers.

To Cave's credit, he chose not to gloss over the role that such signs played in the murder of James Pouillon but to try to understand the rationale for the use of such pictures. To that end, he interviewed Monica Migliorino Miller, the director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society and a theology professor at Madonna University, a Franciscan school in Livonia, Michigan. Mrs. Miller estimates that half of the images of aborted children that are used in pro-life protests are pictures that she took, starting in 1987.

What is most interesting about Mrs. Miller's story is her understanding of what she hoped to accomplish, and her current views on the use of such images. From the beginning, she told Mr. Cave, her purpose was "journalistic": "We felt it was very important to make a record of the reality of abortion."

Yet "Over time," Mr. Cave writes,

her views on which images are appropriate have evolved. She no longer sees gory pictures showing blood or organs as acceptable. She has tried harder to shoot younger fetuses, because that's when most abortions take place, and she said she also believes that the most graphic images should not be deliberately directed at children because "they can't intellectualize what they're seeing."

For this, Mrs. Miller is now being criticized by some of those who have used her pictures the longest. Flip Benham, director of Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, told Mr. Cave that Mrs. Miller's current stance is "a nice sentimental argument. What's important is truth to us; that this is the truth."

There is something to be learned from the difference in the language that Mrs. Miller and Mr. Benham use. Perhaps it can be ascribed to Mrs. Miller's training in theology, but her description of the photos as a "record of the reality of abortion" is accurate, while Mr. Benham's claim that "this is the truth" is not.

This is not a mere semantic quibble. In the modern world, we often use the word truth as if it were synonymous with reality, but in Christian theology, as in classical philosophy, truth has a more limited, and elevated, meaning. Abortion, by definition, is untruth; it is the destruction of the truth of human nature and of the created order. It is a direct assault not only on the child who is being torn apart, limb from limb, but on the God Who declared to the prophet Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:5).

From the time of the Apostles, Christians have understood that the proper response to untruth is not to confront people continually with the reality of that untruth, but to introduce them to the greater reality of the truth—or rather, of the Truth, Who is also the Way and the Life.

At the time of Christ, both chemical and mechanical abortion, as well as infanticide (primarily by exposure) were practiced in the Roman world; by the time that Christianity was declared the official religion of the Roman Empire by Constantine the Great, such practices were virtually unknown. How did that change come about? Through graphic representations of "the truth of abortion"? No; it occurred through the widespread conversion of Romans to Christianity.

The Didache, the first-century document known to early Christians as the teaching of the Twelve Apostles, declared that "There are two Ways, one of Life and one of Death," and those who would follow the Way of Life "shall not procure abortion, nor commit infanticide." Why? Because such actions are the Way of Death, not of Life; they are untruth, and thus opposed to the Truth that will set us free.

What happens when we dwell on untruth, when we constantly expose ourselves and others to it, even with the best of intentions? We run the risk of becoming inured to the reality of that untruth. The shock and the horror that we experience when first confronted with that reality gradually dissipates; we need even more graphic representations of that reality in order to excite the same feelings of revulsion.

We can see this in an anecdotal way in a picture that the New York Times ran alongside Mr. Cave's front-page story. At a prayer vigil for Mr. Pouillon in Owosso in September, in front of a camper plastered with signs that read "Mommy, why do they want to kill me?" and "Abortion=Murder: The same by any name," young girls stand talking. One, a pretty blond-haired girl perhaps 10 or 12 years old, has a broad smile on her face—while a foot or so behind her hangs a four- or five-foot image of a bloodied, mangled child on a white sheet stained with more blood.

"[T]hey can't intellectualize what they're seeing." No; but they can, and will, compartmentalize it, become desensitized, confuse the reality of evil with truth.

On the last day of His earthly life, Christ stood before Pontius Pilate and declared, "For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice." Beholding the Creator of the world and the Savior of mankind, His body bruised by the blows of the servants of the high priest and His face covered with their spittle, Pilate responded, "What is truth?"

The bruises and the spittle were reality, but they obscured the truth that Pilate sought. And in the end, he sent the Truth away to be crucified—the same Truth Who, through His Resurrection, wrought the conversion of the Roman Empire and even, some traditions say, of Pilate himself.

We can end abortion in the United States in the same way that Christians ended abortion in the Roman Empire—but not if we continue to confuse the reality of evil with the Truth of the Gospel.