Some people came away from MTV's "No Easy Decision" with a different take than I did.
I never argued that somehow the couple which decided to abort their six-week unborn child was in any sense pro-life. Markai Durham and her boyfriend, James, already the unmarried parents of one baby girl, aborted in large measure (I argued) because of calculus that pitted Za'karia against their unborn child.
It would be, they told one another, unfair, or unjust to make their first daughter Za'karia "suffer." By that they meant pinching pennies would mean Za'Karia would have a lesser chance for a better life.
What I did (and do) believe is that however cavalier Markai may have come across on a Facebook account, that was not the woman I saw in the documentary and follow-up in studio interview with MTV host Dr. Drew Pinksy. I saw genuine conflict and an active conscience that was speaking loudly to her. Unfortunately, in the guise of not "telling her what to do," James appealed to Markai's desire to "protect " Za'karia. With that the their second child's fate was effectively sealed.
Ross Douhat writes for a number of publications, including the New York Times.
He is by no means where we are on abortion, but he can and does offer thought-provoking insights.
Yesterday's Times' op-ed was titled "The Unborn Paradox." Douhat understands that "No Easy Decision" was "a heartbreaking spectacle, whatever your perspective." He writes, "Durham and her boyfriend are the kind of young people our culture sets adrift--working-class, and undereducated ,with weak support networks, few authority figures and no script for sexual maturity…"
I don't know about James' real motivations--he is not only nearly impossible to understand, he keeps his opinions (on camera) to himself--but Markai aborts largely because (as Douhat writes) this "promises to keep them outside of poverty, and to let them give their first daughter opportunities they never had." Framed that way, the viewer saw why so much was working against the unborn child.
Douhat catches on to what many reviewers mentioned: how angry Markai became when James refers to the baby (post-abortion) as a "thing."
"A 'thing' could turn out just like that"--Markai says, pointing at their daughter. "A bunch of cells [the description the abortion "counselor" employed] can be her." Later she says quietly, "You hurt my feelings when you called it a thing."
In his final paragraphs, Douhat refers to two magazine articles ("dispatches from the world of mid-life, upper-class infertility") and a powerful poem about parents nervously probing for a fetal heartbeat.
"This is the paradox of America's unborn," he writes. "No life is so desperately sought after, so hungrily desired, so carefully nurtured. And yet no life is so legally unprotected, and so frequently destroyed."
Contact: Dave Andrusko
Source: National Right to Life
Publish Date: January 3, 2011
