The Truth: Refusing to Handle with Care

By Jean Garton

"You can't handle the truth!"

This famous line from an award-winning movie also describes the American mindset when it comes to the issues of abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and, now, cloning and stem cell research that requires the destruction of human embryos. The "freedom to choose," apparently, is predicated on the freedom to choose NOT to confront the truth, especially inconvenient truth.

At long last, however, a prominent member of Congress has, in effect, publicly admitted, he can't handle the truth. Senator Arlen Specter, in an interview on the topic of cloning, was asked by a reporter when life begins.

With honesty uncharacteristic of many politicians, the senator replied, "I haven't found it helpful to get into the details."

How's that for a clever-sounding, slippery variation of the old line, "Don't confuse me with the facts"?

For three decades Americans have wrapped the violence of abortion and the destruction of unborn children in euphemisms and tied them with a bow of deceptive rhetoric. We have tolerated media stars who weigh in on various life issues with nonsense that is treated like wisdom from on high.

Like the starlet, speaking at a women's rights conference, who said about abortion, "I totally support a woman's right to choose. Of course, there's nothing wrong with pregnancy either, if that's the woman's choice. After all, that's how half of the human race got here."

So just how did the other half get here? Apparently, the starlet had dropped her cue cards.

Then there is the radio host, in a discussion of assisted suicide, who solemnly declared, "For most people death comes at the end of their life." So when does it come for the rest of us? Obviously, there was no clear channel between his brain and his tongue.

People who "can't handle the truth" use Latin words like "fetus" and "embryo" to imply that what is in the womb of a pregnant woman is less human and, therefore, more easily disposable. The truth is that those words simply convey at what point a human being is in the journey of human development we all undertake.

What such gibberish does not convey is the intimate, purposeful, tranquil, ordered relationship between an unborn child and her mother that is fractured by abortion. For many women this rupture in the most intimate human bond results in lifelong trauma.

People who "can't handle the truth" claim it is essential for women to have access to abortion when they don't want to be mothers. If a woman is pregnant, she already is a mother.

Years ago, on a TV special, Lucille Ball greeted her guest, a very pregnant singer Petula Clark, by saying, "Congratulations, Petula, I heard you were expecting."

The very British Petula retorted, "You Americans! Why do you call it 'expecting' when the boarder has already moved in?"

People who "can't handle the truth" support the creation of human life for the sole purpose of destroying it in the name of scientific research. In so-called "therapeutic" cloning (more accurately described as "research" cloning), a human embryo is created to be lethally experimented on a particularly vile expression of the philosophy that says, "The ends justify the means."

Many people refuse to see the contradiction in wanting safety for themselves while denying it to the most defenseless of human beings. They refuse to see the hypocrisy of demanding protection for themselves while denying it to human beings at their earliest stage in the name of scientific research.

Like the senator, they don't want to "get into the details" because, obviously, "they can't handle the truth."