Pro-lifers come to D.C. because they know equality begins in the womb.
Pro-lifers come to D.C. because they know equality begins in the womb.
E quality is on everyone’s minds these days, and for good reason. We are a prosperous nation — wildly so by world-historical standards — yet opportunities to flourish escape too many Americans. As a nation, we are working to change this hard reality, and as a physician, I’m happy about that, because many of my patients are marginalized and left behind. For many decades, the laudable effort to repair our tattered social fabric has ignored a group of people who are arguably the most powerless. I’m referring to my youngest and most vulnerable patients: unborn babies.
This is why I am so pleased with the theme of this year’s March for Life in Washington, D.C.: Equality begins in the womb.
As a radiologist, I perform ultrasounds for pregnant women so they can see the little child they carry. My goal in this process is the same for each of my two patients: a healthy baby in a healthy mother’s arms. In my profession, we pride ourselves on treating every mother with respect, no matter her class or race. I’d like to report that we do the same for each baby. Since the Supreme Court declared abortion to be a constitutional right in 1973, however, babies have been segregated into two distinct categories: wanted children and unwanted children. Only the “wanted” are protected. The “unwanted” are eliminated, and the choice to do so is protected under law.
This is not the kind of equality we should want in our country. We should instead strive for equal treatment under the law for every human being, regardless of their physical traits or condition, and equal treatment in medicine, whether very young or very old, born or unborn. Back in 1973, when seven men on the Supreme Court invented a right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, many claimed that there was some doubt about when life began.
At the time, obstetric ultrasound was in its infancy. Fetal ultrasound — its specificity, its detail, its ubiquity — was not what it is today. That has changed over the last half-century. We live now in a time when almost every unborn child is examined once or many times throughout pregnancy, in 2-D and 3-D and 4-D. Today, we use sound waves to produce gorgeous, richly detailed images of perfectly human, perfectly lively babies growing quietly in the safe silence of their mother’s body. Science, which never stops illuminating the dark corners of the universe, has cast an ever-brighter light into the velvety blackness of the womb. If the science in 1973 had not advanced enough to show us our littlest brothers and sisters clearly, that’s not the case today. The veil has been pulled back.
Every day, with perfect clarity and in stupendous detail, I witness the endearing humanity of my tiniest patients: lips that purse, eyelids that flutter, noses that itch, and fingers that scratch. I watch the sucking of thumbs and the kicking of legs. I see the blood whooshing through the fetal heart, the valves working furiously, just as they will work decades later when the baby boy or girl grows up and grows old, if they are fortunate enough to do so.
The Supreme Court justices five decades ago never had a chance to see what I now see routinely. They never had the chance to see what most Americans see today: the treasured black-and-white images that announce a baby on the way for expectant parents and grandparents, friends, and loved ones.
My field, fetal ultrasound, has won American hearts and minds to the humanity of the unborn. Science has spoken in favor of my little patients. My vulnerable, voiceless patients have too often been dehumanized, marginalized, and abandoned. They’ve been called “blobs of cells” and mere “products of conception.” What does the no-longer mysterious, patently obvious humanity of my patients demand? Our solidarity and compassion. Equality. Protection from the brutal segregation of the wanted from the unwanted. And, at long last, an end to Roe v. Wade.