Bethel McGrew: Stunned silence

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday April 24th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: owning the truth about abortion. WORLD Opinions commentator Bethel McGrew says a recent exchange on a talk show might help some people see the true evil of abortion.

BETHEL MCGREW: Abortion is murder, and Bill Maher is OK with that. The comedian told us in so many words during a recent episode of Real Time. As he discusses the current debate over Arizona’s abortion law with two British journalists, one of them says she finds it “strange” that abortion has become a major election issue, when there are so many more pressing things for Americans to focus on. “Not if you believe it’s murder,” Maher says.

Maher is unimpressed with Donald Trump’s latest political tap-dance around the controversy, trying to take credit for the reversal of Roe vs. Wade while simultaneously making centrish noises. Trump wants to be seen as pro-life, just not too pro-life. TIME magazine has called the move “as insincere as it is smart.” Granted, there’s room for disagreement even among true pro-lifers around federal bans—Maher goes after a straw man when he jokes that leaving abortion to the states means “saying abortion is okay in some states.” (Murder in general is handled state by state, after all.) But he correctly notes the illogic of drawing a line at some arbitrarily chosen stage of gestation, like 15 weeks.

When it comes down to it, it’s the “absolutist” position that gets Maher’s “respect.” Maher and the absolutist understand each other, because both of them understand exactly what abortion is. “They think it’s murder,” Maher says, “And … it kind of is.” The difference between them, as he succinctly follows up, is that “I’m just OK with that. I am. I mean, there’s 8 billion people in the world. I’m sorry, we won’t miss you.”

The studio reacts with brief, stunned silence, followed by nervous laughter. Piers Morgan asks if this declaration isn’t “quite harsh.” Well, Maher asks, isn’t Morgan pro-choice? Morgan says yes. “Then that’s your position too.”

Maher represents a category of people we can tend to neglect in earnest discussions around cultural engagement strategy. People tend to focus on framing the Christian message so as to “make good men wish it were true,” to quote Pascal. As fruitful as that exercise can be, it’s worth remembering another, equally important goal for our rhetoric: to make bad men see clearly who the truth-tellers are.

There’s no need for a prolonged missiological strategy session on How to Reach Bill Maher. Nobody needs to waste any time assuring him that they’re Not Like Those Christians, not like the silly fundamentalists he spent his time mocking in Religulous. If you tried, he would just mock you too. In fact, he might mock you even more savagely.

Maher isn’t the only comedian to say the quiet part out loud about abortion. You can find similarly callous bits from entertainers like Dave Chapelle and Louis CK. In a grim way, you could say they’re doing what comedians are supposed to do: Say the things everyone else is too uncomfortable to say. One can hope they might unintentionally do a service for people who linger in the mushy middle, unwilling to fully confront unspeakable horrors. We’d like to think everyone would clearly grasp the stakes of abortion, but the sad reality is that many of our fellow Americans remain profoundly ambivalent. 

Some issues are complicated. Others are not. Sometimes, it takes a bad man to say it out loud.

I’m Bethel McGrew.

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