January 21, 2010
Tomorrow we march.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, which brought wholesale abortion to the United States, on January 22, 1973. Every year since 1974 on that anniversary we gather in Washington, D.C., to march from the National Mall to the Supreme Court. Come rain, sleet, snow, wind or calm, we march.
Every year the crowd gets bigger and every year the crowd gets younger, hopeful signs that perhaps the days of abortion in America are numbered, hopeful signs that the culture of death may not have the last word.
The March for Life is an amazing phenomenon and all the more so in light of a Washington Post Magazine article published this past Sunday.
Shankar Vedantam's article, "Beyond Comprehension," begins with the story of Hokget, a dog belonging to the captain of the ill-fated ship, Insiko. When the Insiko caught fire at sea, the crew was rescued, but Hokget was left behind on the still-floating wreck. When the story got out, money poured in to pay for what became an extremely expensive rescue. "Something about a dog lost on an abandoned ship in the Pacific gripped people's imagination," writes Vedantam.
He then goes on to ask a very disturbing question: Why does one dog stir such compassion while millions of needy people don't?
"Eight years before the Hokgat saga began," he notes, "the same world that showed extraordinary compassion for a dog sat on its hands as hundreds of thousands of human beings were killed in the Rwandan genocide." He then cites studies indicating that we are wired for deep and active compassion for one of our fellow creatures in need, but are overwhelmed by dozens, let alone thousands or millions.
"I want to offer a disturbing idea," he writes:
The reason human beings seem to care so little about mass suffering and death is precisely because the suffering is happening on a mass scale.... Hokget did not draw our sympathies because we care more about dogs than people; she drew our sympathies because she was a single dog lost on the biggest ocean in the world. Our hidden brain—my term for a host of unconscious mental processes that subtly biases our judgment, perceptions and actions—shapes our compassion into a telescope.
Earlier last week, I experienced this viscerally. As I tried to take in the torrent of images from Haiti, they all blurred into an inchoate mass of vague, unhappy feelings. Whatever compassion I felt was remote, diffused and unfocused.
Then I received an email from a friend with the subject line: "Stuart was at the epicenter of Haiti earthquake." I drew a quick, sharp breath and my stomach sank. His son, Stuart, who like my own son is in his mid-twenties, was in Haiti leading a missions team. The hillside they had hiked on minutes earlier collapsed; the house where they were staying fell to a mini tsunami caused by the earthquake. The Haitian earthquake suddenly had a face.
Of course that face was a white, American face that has already been evacuated to home and safety. But it nonetheless brought the devastation close and made it real rather than allowing it to stay far away and abstract.
As a Haitian proverb says, "What the eye does not see, the heart cannot feel." When you and I see crowds, compassion is difficult; we need a face. Yet we read that when Jesus saw the crowds he had compassion on them as sheep with no shepherd, lost and aimless (Matthew 9:36). This is a kind of compassion—deep emotions for all—belongs to God.
Which is why the March for Life is so astounding: there is no individual face.
What is more distant and abstract than millions of unborn children? They are a vast hidden crowd with faces known only to God. How is it possible for us to have compassion them? How can the heart feel what the eye cannot possibly see?
