By Regis Nicoll

I Was Blind, But Now I See

“One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (John 9:25)

FIRST SIGHT
Probably each of us has had an experience that awakened our conscience to an evil or injustice—an experience that forever changed the way we looked at the world and ourselves—a moment of moral clarity that made us reflect, “I was blind, but now I see.”

As a young boy growing up in the rural South, water fountains labeled “White” and “Colored” were as normal to me as men and women restrooms. So when my grandmother took me to Woolworth one day, what caught my eye was not the separate lunch counter for “Colored”; it wasn’t even the fact that the “Colored” counter was located on a mezzanine just below the one for whites—which was a social statement, in and of itself. No, what was out of place was the “white” man sitting among all of those black people.

“Grandma, what is that white man doing there,” I asked.

Grandma quickly surveyed the lower counter and then turned back in a whisper, “Oh, he only looks white. He’s just very, very light, son.”

Somehow her answer failed to satisfy my young mind. I stole another look at the mezzanine to study the man. But try as hard as I could, the man was not “colored,” he was white. Noticing my confusion, Grandma leaned in to explain how differences in skin pigmentation can make one appear white.

For the next half hour, between sips on my cherry Coke, I glanced down at the mezzanine. It didn’t help that there were customers in our section darker than the man below. I was puzzled.

That is not to say I didn’t have prejudices of my own; I certainly did, well into my high school years. But the lunch at Woolworth was my first awareness that there was something much deeper than skin color here. In the following years, my conscience was scraped each time I returned to that scene. Nevertheless, it would be much later before another experience would bring me full-face with the evil underlying my faulty thinking.

THE WEST WING

For Dr. Richard Selzer, a moment of moral clarity came in the west wing of a university hospital in 1976. It was there that he witnessed the abortion of a 19-week-old fetus involving a needle injection technique. In the Esquire article, “What I Saw at the Abortion Clinic,” Selzer writes,

I see something! It is unexpected, utterly unexpected . . . I see a movement—a small one. But I have seen it. And then I see it again. And now I see that it is the hub of the needle in the woman’s belly that has jerked. First to one side. Then to the other side. Once more it wobbles, is tugged, like a fishing line nibbled by a sunfish. . . .

Dr. Selzer goes on to say that the vision of the fetus struggling for life will be ever etched in his mind; and that whatever language is used to defend abortion is powerless to erase that image. “For what can language do against the truth of what I saw?”

I was blind, but now I see.

The streets of Birmingham

Shortly after that lunch in Woolworth’s, I heard terms in the schoolyard like “high yellow” and “mulatto” delivered with the same sneer as “n-----.” That not only confirmed my own bigoted notions, but it expanded the scope of my prejudices to include those whose skin color fell outside of the “normal” range. As I came to understand, it wasn’t the skin color that mattered, it was the bloodline. That made it sensible. It gave me a rational basis for discriminating between “us” and “them.”

Then on May 2, 1963, Birmingham firefighters turned fire hoses on a group of young civil rights protesters. The force of the water was so strong that it pummeled the young people against brick walls and the pavement, rolling them down the street. And if that were not enough, K-9 forces were dispatched to finish the job.

Although I had heard about this shocking incident, it didn’t become real until I saw the actual footage years later. The vision of young black students pounded to the ground by water guns, and others with their clothes and flesh ripped open by German shepherds shook me to the core. But more chilling was seeing that this wasn’t the act of angry citizens; it was the work of law officers acting on the orders of elected officials. That became my moment of moral clarity. No more could I justify my complicity or complacence to the evil of racial prejudice.

I was blind, but now I see.

THE STREETS OF NEW YORK

Moments of moral clarity can also come upon an entire community. Dr. Selzer tells of an experience that jolted a neighborhood out of moral slumber. In Moral Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery, he writes:

On the morning of August 6, 1975, the people of 73rd Street near Woodside Avenue . . . rise from their beds, dress, eat breakfast, and leave their houses for work, they have forgotten, if they had ever known, that the garbage truck had passed earlier that morning . . . They close their doors and descend to the pavement. It is midsummer . . . You walk toward the bus stop. Others, your neighbors, are waiting there. It is all so familiar.

All at once you step on something soft. You feel it with your foot. Even through your shoe you have the sense of something unusual, something marked by a special “give.” It is a foreignness upon the pavement. Instinct pulls your foot away in an awkward little movement. You look down, and you see . . . a tiny naked body, its arms and legs flung apart, its head thrown back, its mouth agape, its face serious. A bird, you think, fallen from its nest. But there is no nest here on 73rd Street, no bird so big . . . And you bend to see. Because you must . . . It is a baby, and dead. You cover your mouth, your eyes. You are fixed. Horror has found its chink and crawled in, and you will never be the same as you were.

Now you look about; another man has seen it too. “My God,” he whispers. . . . There is a cry. “Here’s another!” and “Another!” and “Another.” . . . Yes, it is true! There are more of these . . . little carcasses upon the street . . . . The people on 73rd street do not speak to each other. It is too soon for outrage, too late for blindness. It is the time of unresisted horror.

Later, at the police station, the investigation is brisk, conclusive. It is the hospital director speaking. “Fetuses accidentally got mixed up with the hospital rubbish . . .[and] were picked up at approximately 8:15 am by a sanitation truck. Somehow, the plastic lab bag, labeled hazardous material, fell off the back of the truck and broke open. No, it is not known how the fetuses got in the orange plastic bag labeled hazardous material. It is a freak accident.’

The hospital director wants you to know that it is not an everyday occurrence. Once in a lifetime, he says. But you have seen it, and what are his words to you now? He grows affable, familiar, tells you that, by mistake, the fetuses got mixed up with the other debris. (Yes, he says other, he says debris.) He has spent the entire day, he says, trying to figure out how it happened. He wants you to know that. Somehow it matters to him.

He goes on: aborted fetuses that weigh one pound or less are incinerated. Those weighing over one pound are buried at the city cemetery. He says this. Now you see. It is orderly. It is sensible. The world is not mad. This is still a civilized society. . . . But just this once, you know it isn’t. You saw, and you know.

I was blind, but now I see.

A MORAL TOUCHSTONE

Throughout this election year we have heard candidates from both political parties voice their convictions on such things as global warming, abortion, energy independence, health care, marriage, and the war on terror. For citizens confused over which policies should have primacy, it is important to realize that while they all have a moral dimension, they have different moral weights.

The bedrock of our rule of law is equality and the endowed rights of every individual—the most basic of which, is the right to life. Consequently, policies that most directly and widely uphold the “sanctity of life” take precedence over all others.

That does not mean that affordable housing, environmental protection, and the national debt are not important; they are—extremely so. Each impacts the quality of our lives in one way or another.

It means that protecting the unborn, aged, infirmed, and other vulnerables from being marginalized as “non-persons” is morally superior to advocating animal rights. It means that fighting slavery, sex-trafficking, AIDS, genocide and hunger has a higher moral value than fighting global warming. It means that saving one million children a year from the holocaust of abortion has a higher moral value than the reproductive “rights” of women.

It means that eliminating racial prejudice has priority over eliminating off-shore drilling. It means that liberating the poor from the grip of the welfare state is morally superior to policies that create a permanent underclass. It means that protecting traditional marriage—proven the best institution for the care and well-being of children—takes precedence over the desires of adults to express their sexual freedom.

In summary, it means that the moral value of any social policy should be judged by how profoundly it guards and defends the endowed rights for all people, especially the right to life.

In the coming weeks, the moral rhetoric of both parties is sure to reach fever pitch. But for people who would “see,” the “sanctity of life” will rise above the soaring orations as the touchstone of moral clarity.