The Procedure (A Short Film)
March 30, 2011
Brett Salkeld is a doctoral student in theology at Regis College in Toronto. He is a father of two (so far) and husband of one.
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The Twilight Zone tackles abortion. I wonder how this would be regarded by women who have not had abortions but miscarriages. I doubt that it would make them feel any better.
Do only children from induced abortions wind up on that playground with numbers tattooed on their necks, or do those from spontaneous abortions go there, too? And I can’t help thinking of the statistics that 60% to 80% of all “people” who are conceived die within a few days. The playground should be much more crowded.
David, you never cease to amaze on this issue. No one “winds up on that playground.” It was a picture of the woman’s conscience. If your conscience can’t tell the difference between a miscarriage and an intended abortion, I’m not sure what to say to you.
If the video was about rape, the playground wouldn’t need to include everyone who ever had sex. If it was about theft, it wouldn’t need to include anyone who ever lost a possession accidentally or gave it away. If it was about lying, it wouldn’t have to include everyone who has ever had the facts honestly misrepresented to them. And if it was about euthanasia it wouldn’t need to include everyone who has died from a chronic and debilitating disease.
And I’m not interested in hearing how, in each case, this isn’t a perfect parallel. Of course it’s not. There’s no such thing. But they are parallel in the vital respect that there is a difference between doing something on purpose and being a victim of circumstance.
I’ve never had an abortion, but the comments under the video at Youtube seem to indicate that it spoke to the experience of women who have had abortions.
Brett,
As I indicated, I viewed the video as kind of a brief Twilight Zone episode, and so I did not interpret it as purely the woman’s conscience but as at least a possible indication that her vision of the playground children was in the realm of the inexplicable or supernatural. It made me think of Archbishop Chaput’s comments about justifying ourselves to the victims of abortion in the next life.
If your conscience can’t tell the difference between a miscarriage and an intended abortion, I’m not sure what to say to you.
Of course there is a difference between an induced abortion and a spontaneous abortion/miscarriage. But there are similarities, too. According to the teachings of the Church, a woman who has a miscarriage has lost a real son or daughter whom she will never see (in this life, anyway). The idea in the film of the son or daughter you will never have a chance to be a mother or father to applies to all infants, from the moment of conception, that do not live to be born. In my interpretation of the film, the children in the park may not be just a figment of the woman’s conscience and imagination. They may be akin to Archbishop Chaput’s victims of abortion whom we will face in the next life. I did not try to think up the most easily attacked interpretation I could come up with in order to make negative comments. I went with my first impression, which is that the children in the park are in some way real.
I have many criticisms of the film, which I choose not to share here, but I have not made any pro-abortion statements. I am just pointing out that the women in the film lost a child, and we are supposed to be touched by it and grieve with her. But knowingly losing a child is common, and unknowingly losing a child is probably much more common that giving birth.
I have heard many women comment about how unsympathetic the Church has been regarding miscarriage (although I think things are have been changing relatively recently). I can’t remember if I told this story before here, but my mother told me (many years after it happened) that in the early or mid 1950s, she had what she thought might have been a very early miscarriage. My mother was medically knowledgeable, so she may have been correct. She called our parish priest and explained the situation to him, and she asked him what she should do with the product of this possible miscarriage. He told her to flush it down the toilet. I often remember that when pro-lifers elevate the unborn to angels or martyrs. I think my mother was shocked by the priest’s advice and attitude, and I was genuinely shocked when my mother told me the story. I think it wasn’t until well after Roe v Wade that the unborn who were lost through miscarriage began to count for anything at all. So often when I think of the alleged reverence for the unborn, I think that I may have had a second brother or a third sister that was flushed down the toilet.
I don’t feel I really commented on abortion above so much as commenting on miscarriage and early pregnancy loss, and also from the Catholic point of view that life begins at conception. It still seems to me that pro-lifers have not grasped the implications of maintaining that life (personhood) begins at conception. If this is true, and if the scientific findings regarding early embryo loss are true, then there is a tremendous loss of life in early pregnancy that I don’t believe can just be blithely ignored because it is not deliberate killing. As I have noted a number of times before, early embryo loss is of almost no interest in human beings, but it is of great interest in cattle breeding, because there it is a matter of productivity. There’s something strange about that, although I seem to be the only one who thinks so.
I had a friend who miscarried write an article for a Catholic magazine here in Canada called Celebrate!. I’m not sure if it is available online.
I know many who have grieved with miscarriage and there is a strange feeling of not knowing how to feel when you might have miscarried. That I know from experience.
I am all for the Church being more supportive of people in such situations.
It seems to me that your constant reference to this issue is a bit of a red herring. If you want to make the case that we should care more for post-miscarriage women, I am all for it. If you only make that case when someone says something bad about abortion, it looks fishy. I may be wrong, but those are the optics from here.
Any of my comments about early embryo loss or miscarriage are meaningful only if the Catholic Church is correct that life (personhood) begins at conception. If embryos are mere clumps of cells, then the fact that so many of them die is really of no concern.
My thoughts and my position on abortion vary, but the point I am making is that if the lives of the unborn who are aborted are precious, the lives of all the unborn who die are precious. And that includes the unborn who die without our ever having known they were conceived. As I say often, there is not even a prayer for them. It is true I generally bring this up only in the context of discussions of abortion, but when else are the unborn discussed on Vox Nova?
I think I will feel the same way no matter where I am on the pro-life/pro-choice spectrum. There is nothing special about the potentially aborted. They are no more special than the potentially miscarried, or the “post born.” If life (personhood) begins at conception, then every life is precious whether it continues for days, months, or years.
We seem agreed on the facts, if not on the angle.
I’m not sure it needs to be brought up every time. And I think it is natural to express more concern for the victims of violence than for those who die naturally. That is usually the case for the post-born as well and no one is complaining about that.
David,
I’ve said this before to you, and I’ll say it again: Notwithstanding the terrible advice your mother received from the priest in the 1950s, in my experience, members of the Catholic Church take the death of unborn babies due to miscarriages very seriously. Parishes routinely have support groups for mothers who have lost their unborn children due to miscarriages; they have prayers and services in remembrance for miscarried children; funeral Masses are organized for miscarried children (my parish had a funeral Mass a couple of months ago); Catholic hospitals are supposed to treat the remains of miscarried children with dignity; and burials of the remains of miscarriages can be organized. To say that the Catholic Church doesn’t take the death of an unborn child seriously is simply incorrect. What happened with your mother was wrong, the priest was misguided, and in my experience, is an anomaly.
The difference between miscarriage and induced abortion is the difference between natural death and murder.
Kudos to Brett Salkeld for his prolife postings.
“He is a father of two (so far) and husband of one.”
Totally off topic – but that line keeps throwing me off -
if you are the father of two children than the husband of one sounds rather bad-
if you are the father of two girls than perhaps the husband of one sounds o.k. assuming that your wife likes being called a girl.
Zygotes of the world, unite!
They can’t. They’re helpless. They have less opportunity for collective action than even the most poorly treated workers. We, on the other hand, can unite with them. We owners of the means of production can decide to help the workers of our own free and good will. That is the only thing that will help them. No chance for class warfare here. Just old-fashioned solidarity.
As a propaganda piece, I don’t think it is effective. (I don’t think anyone cares to debate the artistic merits.) I think it affirms the pro-life movement’s narratives over abortion, narratives that haven’t held up over time. It has been over a decade since pre-natal imaging became mainstream. There is a wide acceptance that we are speaking of a baby at the 8 to 12 week mark. While it is true that there were people at the margins over 1st trimester elective abortion and the question of life, that is no longer the case. People seeking abortions today understand they are taking life.
The acceptance of 1st trimester abortion in particular is due primarily to the belief that it effectively reduces poverty. A secondary reason is that it prevents women from being compelled to form households they do not desire. When we have 20% of households with children on food stamps and schools where over 80% of the children receive free or reduced lunches out of economic need, it ain’t like the folks using the primary reason are full of it. Being a child is one of the greatest markers of poverty in this country; the only greater ones I’m aware of are age and disability.
Maybe it’s ineffectiveness as “propaganda” is what I liked about it. ;)
As I mentioned, the comments on Youtube seemed to indicate that it spoke to post-abortive women.
I don’t know how to tell what the (primary or secondary) reasons are for acceptance of 1st trimester abortions are, but it seems to me that the inability to imagine the foetus as a person is probably a big factor. I think that is confirmed by the pro-choice side’s insistence on using obscurantist language to talk about the unborn (e.g. “clump of cells”). They realize they are fighting for people’s imaginations.
One of the best moments I ever saw on the Colbert Report was when one of his guests suggested that the newly conceived were the moral equivalent of skin cells that are scratched off one’s arm. Colbert looked shocked and asked something like “You mean, skin cells from your arm will grow into a new person?!” The guest and audience were at a loss.
The issue for me is how we attempt to consciously or unconsciously numb ourselves to the reality of our suffering and the suffering of others. What was depicted were women is isolation not only from others but from each other and even self. An analyst named Winnicott stated that “It is a pleasure to be hidden, but disaster not to be found.” Why are they so isolated and is this portrayal of isolation accurate? I believe it is accurate. It is in that isolation and the lack of a mature sense of self that the potential for abortion is planted. How many men accompany their mates or sexual partners at abortions? What seems to be intrinsic in the intrapersonal dynamic of abortion is isolation from self and others beginning with the pressure of social conditioning attempting to make young girls into something they are not. The moment the young girl realizes this process, and the lack of influence she has over this process, she will go into hiding and begin to relate to self and others from what is described as the false self.
That is just for starters.
Dear David,
Thank you for your comments here. I understand your point, and I grasp its tremendous significance, even if nobody else here does. The actual scale of the waste is horrific beyond imagination. It really does demand theological attention, but it is ignored. It tells us the true nature of the universe we inhabit. We are only beginning to catch a glimpse of the nightmare.
It seems that the place for theological attention in this regard is in the area of evolution and the integrity of creation. Polkinghorne has done interesting work in that area.
In any case, though I agree that there could be more theological attention given here, I am not so horrified. Everybody dies.
Thank you!
I understand your point, and I grasp its tremendous significance, even if nobody else here does.
As I said above, many people in the Catholic Church recognize the terrible sadness of human beings dying through miscarriages. Several people close to me have had miscarriages, and they truly consider it the loss of a child. My mother had a miscarriage, and it was a source of great sadness (our family named our unborn sibling and my parents talked to me and my siblings about him being in heaven). Countless hours and millions of dollars have been expended in research seeking to minimize the chance of a miscarriage. For all those couples who desperately want a child but have a miscarriage, it almost borders on insulting to suggest that they have no regard for the child that was lost.
I recognize the terrible sadness that couples suffer in a miscarriage and that makes abortion all the more heart-breaking, considering that these unborn are killed intentionally, while there are couples who would do anything to avoid the unintentional death of their own unborn.
There is very little theological justification for believing those who die before birth are in heaven. The justifications are like the physicists’ justifications for orbiting electrons not creating a magnetic field: Life is easier if electrons don’t, and the unborn are in heaven.
M.Z.,
In fairness to my parents, they were speaking to me and my siblings when I was about 7 or 8 years old. That’s the kind of thing you tell a child when they lose a dog — obviously, it’s not strange to tell them that when their mother has lost a baby.
There is very little theological justification for believing those who die before birth are in heaven.
What happens to human beings who die in miscarriage or in abortion, is a similar theological question to what happens to human beings who die in infancy before baptism, or as a pagan in Amazonia who has never been evangelized, or as a Greek who died before the Incarnation, etc. Instead of saying “there is little theological justification”, it’s probably more correct to say “we don’t know of any theological justification, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for God to bestow His grace and mercy.” We only know of baptism of water, of blood, and of desire as a means to get to heaven – but that doesn’t rule out other ways God works. The Church does honor the Holy Innocents as saints — which is strange since they didn’t knowingly choose martyrdom or choose God.
Does it really make much difference *to the child* whether it is miscarried and flushed down the toilet or is aborted and flushed down the toilet? I do not apologize for being horrified at the thought of *any* child being flushed down a toilet. You say that everybody dies. I have never seen this observation used to lessen the horror of abortion. If the death of a child is not an occasion for horror, then what is the occasion for horror in abortion? If the horror is not rooted in the indignity, the pain, and the loss the child suffers, then what is it rooted in? Abortion is a horror, but when a child is miscarried, and it suffers the pain of death, the loss of life, and the indignity of being flushed down a toilet, that is not a horror, because it was not an abortion? When a child dies a slow painful death from cancer, it is not a horror, because it was not an abortion? It is clear that the subject of abortion is toxic. No rational discussion can survive it.
Rockliff,
Please apply a little less selectively. Dying as the result of violence is a horror. Dying of a terrible disease is another kind of horror. Dying peacefully in your bed is an evil, but not the same kind of evil as either of the first two (different) evils listed here.
If you can’t tell the difference between dying naturally and getting killed, I’m not sure you have the rational high ground you are claiming.
The claim that everyone dies is not used to lessen the horror of abortion for the same reason it is not used to lessen the horror of war or murder. They are different kinds of things than dying naturally.
Does it make a difference to you whether you are shot in cold blood or whether you die in your sleep? I know it makes a difference to me. And pain is not the only relevant factor in the difference.
If the horror is not rooted in the indignity, the pain, and the loss the child suffers, then what is it rooted in?
Easy answer: It’s rooted in being intentionally killed by a person.
Husband of One,
I find it insulting that you suggest that I cannot tell the difference between dying naturally and getting killed. You actually believe that I do not know the difference? Why say such a thing?
I think it is cold blooded for you to shrug off the deaths of children who do not die by abortion with the inane quip that “everybody dies.” Abortion is not the only form of inhumanity, a case which I do not need to make, as you have made it quite eloquently yourself already.
I did not see myself as shrugging off anyone’s death. I thought I was pointing out that the problem of death is not exclusive to those in the womb.
And I’m sorry you felt insulted. To me, your arguments genuinely looked like they weren’t taking into account the difference between dying and getting killed.
While you are mocking my point of view, instead of engaging it, please answer me this: Would you rather die naturally at the age of 30, or get killed at the age of 90? Would you rather die naturally and get flushed down a toilet, or get killed and receive a Catholic burial? It must be very comforting to know exactly how to rank all the goods and evils of life. It did not realize how simple everything was.
I’m sorry you see me as mocking. I really thought I was engaging your arguments. I genuinely found them seriously lacking. I will try to answer your questions.
I think I would rather get killed at 90. It is a tragedy when someone dies in the prime of life. It is also a tragedy when people die at other times in life, but not necessarily the same kind of tragedy. But I’d rather have a good death at 30 than a bad one at 90. There are more things to a good and bad death than just if they are natural or violent.
The second pair looks a little unreal to me, but I’ll give it a try. I think I’d rather die naturally. Not because I don’t value a Catholic burial, and I certainly would join you and David in advocating for a more explicit acknowledgment of the loss experienced in miscarriage at a communal/ceremonial level, but because I think being killed is a greater loss than not getting a Catholic burial.
I’m not claiming to know how exactly to rank all the goods and evils of life. (Now it looks like you are the one mocking.) But I have no problem ranking a natural death as a lesser evil than being killed. If pointing that out is insulting, I’m sorry. That seems to me to be what is at issue here.
R.Rockliff,
In your comments you have been asking questions and specifically challenging Brett on his points. He graciously answered you.
No Brett, what is at issue here is that some people interpret any ideas that differ from their own as “arguments.” I did not come here to argue. I made a comment about considering something that does not get much consideration, and the debate-junkie machinery sprang to life. My “arguments” were “lacking.” Well, Brett, I did not come here to “argue” with you, or anybody. It does not take a theology student to figure that out. Read my first comment. This is my last comment.
This was my response to your first comment:
It seems that the place for theological attention in this regard is in the area of evolution and the integrity of creation. Polkinghorne has done interesting work in that area.
In any case, though I agree that there could be more theological attention given here, I am not so horrified. Everybody dies.
I’m sorry it set you off so much, but it is hardly “debate-junkie machinery.”
I started with a specific acknowledgment of your point and even an attempt to locate it in theological discourse. That aspect of my response was not deemed worth your time. My only point with the last line, that you deemed so offensive, was that, if the mystery of death is a theological problem, it doesn’t strike me that fetal death is a special case requiring much more theological effort than everyone else’s. Perhaps you disagree? If so, you are welcome to try make that point.
Re: video
I liked it, and I especially liked how positively the clinic workers were portrayed – how caring, thoughtful, sweet they were. The clinic workers truly care about women…. but that doesn’t change the sadness of abortion. It reminded me of the Abby Johnson book, UnPlanned, which I’ll plug once more (a great book!). In the book, Johnson makes clear that those at the clinic are people who truly care for women even though they are sorely misguided.
Brett you really need to be more temperate with your commentators if you hope to engage them in meaningful dialogue. I mean, the reference to Polkinghorne was way below the belt.