When pro-abortion activists, specifically NARAL, can be offended by a Superbowl commercial over a snack chip that shows an ultrasound of a 9-month old baby and suggest it is part of a pro-life conspiracy to “humanize fetuses” you know you are dealing with a mindset that has completely capitulated to an anti-science recognition of what constitutes “human” and “alive.”
A small caveat is in order: I think the issues that surround abortion are numerous, delicate and very complex. But the larger point to be made is what others have already pointed out. If pro-choice people are crying “foul” over an ultrasound because it “humanizes a fetus” one needs to ask them what sort of species the “fetus” SHOULD belong to? After all a “fetus” is a general term used in biology to refer to everything from unborn whales to unborn cats and unborn rats. When a HUMAN mother is pregnant she is pregnant with a HUMAN fetus–not some unidentified organism! So how can anyone cry foul over an ultrasound “humanizing” a human fetus? It just goes to show how far removed some are from objectively considering the facts before them. What they really mean by “humanizing” is better defined as “rendering life and assigning value.”
Ultrasounds add value to the unborn by bringing to light a beating heart in “the dark.” The science of the womb threatens the carefully crafted narrative of the pro-choice community, and that is why abortion advocates would rather keep the public in the medieval dark ages.
It is not that NARAL and PP are evil people. Many are decent and kind. They are just ill-informed, closed off to further reflection and wish to remain so because fiction is so much more convenient than truth when your own ability to look at yourself in the mirror depends on whether or not you can personally maintain and sustain a philosophy of life that necessitates that the “nameless face of protoplasm” and the “object of tissue” you visit death upon every day has been sufficiently dehumanized in your heart.
That being said people caught in such a deceptive lie NEED grace, forgiveness, truth, understanding and our prayers. Condemnation alone is not their “need” nor has it ever been lost humanity’s need. The Church often gets this backwards. Condemnation alone never changes anyone–which is why Christ said he didn’t come to fulfill that purpose. Condemnation is a self-imposed consequence OF rejecting light. It is not a purpose FOR light.
“For God so loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son… He did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him…This, then, is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. …anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light…” (John 3:16-20).
In short a non-political, non-threatening commercial about Doritos threw uncomfortable “light” on NARAL’s dark philosophy of dehumanization. And that is what made both NARAL and PP queazy and reactionary. But the reaction is a good sign! It shows their hearts are still tender. Better that than a calloused and cauterized heart beyond feeling.
And that’s my 2 cents…er…5 cents.
A Theology in Tension 
Good analysis! Thanks for both bringing me up to date a little (I missed both the commercial and the response), and for always keeping the focus where it needs to be: on God’s economy of Grace.
Ur welcome Tim! Thanks for checking in.