A man visited a wealthy friend who lived on a large estate. The visitor decided to step outside for some night air before retiring to a guest bedroom. As he stepped out a back door, he flipped an outside light switch and found that the light did not work. He reached into a pocket, pulled out a penlight, and turned it on. He found that the small flashlight was only strong enough to illuminate objects a few feet away.
As the visitor aimed his flashlight at the ground, it shone upon a small sign next to the walkway. The sign read "There be dragons here!". Recognizing that phrase from mythological tales, the visitor felt faintly uneasy. He shone the penlight around him and found that everywhere the light fell he saw oddly shaped purple and yellow flowers. After standing silently puzzled for a few moments, the visitor laughed softly. Although he did not know many flowers by sight, he had heard of snapdragons. "My friend has a nice little garden of snapdragons", he thought.
As he walked further down the path, the visitor found that the little garden was not so little. The snapdragons gave way to a large section of round yellow flowers. A sign near the path said "Before Nightsies". The visitor recognized these flowers as daisies. A bit further out in the garden the visitor found a large bed of orange flowers with a sign that read "Not Dad's". Having caught on to his host's riddles, the visitor took only a few seconds to reason that these flowers must be mums.
The visitor spent over an hour following the path through the garden, shining his small penlight on the flowers and signs that were visible to him. He spent several minutes at some of the signs, trying to decide the name of the nearby flowers. For some he wasn't quite sure, and for others he simply had no idea. He also noticed that the planting areas varied in size and shape for each type of flower. He wondered how much he could not see of this very large garden.
As the path wound its way back to the house, the flashlight began to fail. It became too weak to be very useful, so the visitor found his way along the path by the dim light of a partial moon. Just as he reached the house, he smelled a familiar scent, and said "A rose, even in the dark, still smells as sweet".
The next morning, the host took the visitor to a nearby airport. They went for a sightseeing flight and the visitor's friend made a point of flying over his house. The visitor was amazed to see the nature of his friend's estate. The garden was very large. Not only that, but it was layed out so that each flowerbed was shaped in the form of that type of flower. Together, many flowerbeds formed a bouquet, which sat in a vase made from a maze of hedgework. The whole garden was a beautiful piece of artwork that could be fully appreciated only from above.
The visitor noticed other gardens on the large estate. One appeared from the air to be a bowl of fruit, complete with an orange, apple, banana, and grapes. Another garden showed a full rainbow in all its promise and glory. The visitor had never imagined anything so extraordinary while wandering with his flashlight the previous night.
Here on earth, we wander through our lives encountering many different situations and problems, each demanding that we stop and consider the issue to reach a decision. We have just enough vision to examine the landscape immediately surrounding the small issue, and that sometimes helps us make a decision. So it is with abortion.
Opinions on abortion vary with the scope of our vision. Some pro-choice supporters argue that it is simply a matter of personal legal rights. Their view is that a woman's rights must supersede any rights of the unborn child within her. Others argue that there are views to consider other than the absolute view of a crushed and dismembered fetus. They argue that there are so many reasons why women have abortions that only the woman involved can fully examine the context of her situation to make that choice. Feminists seem to make abortion a right of baptism, and a rebirth into a state of independence from men. Pro-life activists seek full legal rights for the unborn, equal to those of the mother. Meanwhile, legislators and courts consider abortion laws ranging from fetal rights, to waiting periods, parental and spousal consent, the Freedom of Choice Act, and an amendment to the Constitution. All sides are failing to rise above the surrounding landscape, to view the larger picture.
Looking at the legal rights of a woman and her unborn child, or the immediate contextual reasons for her decision does not provide the full view of a larger picture. Our view can be pulled back further to include how a single abortion affects relations within the rest of the family. From there, how does each abortion affect the value base of the community? That view is also incomplete. We are simply viewing the muddled middle. One of every four unborn children in the United States is killed while in the womb, totaling 1.5 million abortion deaths annually. How does this affect our value of human life? One can also ask if having easy access to an abortion encourages people to engage in sex at an earlier age, and continue it more promiscuously, thereby further eroding our collective moral base. Even these troubling facts and questions fail to pull our view back far enough.
This should not be an issue of the relationship between woman and fetus, or woman to community, or citizen to government, or even one government to the world. If the view is pulled back for maximum context, we must finally be faced with another absolute view, and a very moral question. It is ultimately a question concerning mankind's relationship with his Creator.
Man does not create life. He is life created. Woman does not create new life. She has new life created within her. For mankind to end that life is a sin against our Father. The Lord commanded "Thou shalt not kill". He did not add "those outside the womb", or "unless given the right by legislation". Human laws and individual items of context serve only to obscure the basic issue of right and wrong. It is in the muddled middle of every question that mankind loses sight of his relationship with God, and is blinded to the choice between Good and Evil.
In this human world obsessed with legalities the unborn child has, perhaps, no legal right to life. But there is a higher law which those of Judeo-Christian faiths must allow precedence: the Law of God. Every child He creates has a right to live in His world. A child of God, even in the dark, is one of the Lord's children.
