Blake Adams' 2008 Oratoy Contest Winner Speech

Truth

            Have you ever been lied to?  What’s more, have you ever lied yourself?  Sadly, it’s even more inevitable.  Whenever you tell a lie there is relief, even ecstasy, at having successfully misdirected the issue from yourself.  In fact, you convince yourself it wasn’t a lie, but a clever riddle, a trick, or a game (such is mankind a genius at deceiving itself).  But over time, the truth begins to weigh down the heart.  Your grasp on reality weakens, and guilt blocks out logical and moral systems, until finally the lie must be believed, even by you, or else you lose the game.
            In the year 1973, Roe v. Wade abortion was legalized.  This effectively assured the annihilation of unborn American citizens and jeopardized the safety of the mothers bearing them.  By the end of this speech, at least 21 children will die in America alone.  But the issue of abortion did not begin with Roe V. Wade, but long ago, when the truth of life was trivialized.  This trivialization was personified from 1650 to the early 1800’s, in a time span history recognizes as the Age of Reason.  It was here when these lies took the form of philosophies:  Romanticism, Realism, Materialism, Deism, Naturalism, Existentialism, and Impressionism to name a few, each had their day in the sun.  It seemed a new philosopher with a new philosophy took the stand every day and declared he had discovered the truth, the very meaning of life.  All the -isms were catalogued and labeled, each with their differences and flaws, some complicated and others simple.  The Age of Reason came to a close in the early 1800’s, leaving in its wake a mixed up humanity, confused, and tired of debating the truths and non-truths of all philosophies; until all that remained was numbness.  This numbness is the philosophy that rules today, and it is called Post-Modernism.  A belief that states stating:   what you think, and what you believe, is no better and no worse than what I think, and what I believe.  Therefore, who is right?  Who is wrong?  There is no such thing as truth.  The only possible way to know if something is wrong is if it hurts, or, if it’s illegal.  Because mankind has bought into the ideas of Post-Modernism, people with no moral compass of their own must default to the decisions of the powers that be.   Is this the right way?  Is this the American way?  Of course not, but it is the prevalent way! 
            So what is truth?  Let’s go back in time to a century when the suggestion of a mother choosing to harm her unborn child would have been an unnatural, unthinkable idea.  In Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, we find the definition of truth as, “Conformity to fact or reality; exact accordance with that which is, or has been or shall be.”  Now let’s move forward to the modern, American Heritage Dictionary, where truth reads: “A statement proven to be or accepted as true.”  Say again?   “accepted as true?”   The difference between these two meanings is subtle, but deadly.  The 1828 definition is strict, specific, exact, to-the-point, and perhaps even absolute.  Whereas the modern definition implies that truth is only true as long as people accept it as true
            Ladies and gentlemen, abortion is but a branch to the Post Modernist root.  They cannot say that an unborn child is or is not a person, because hey, it’s all relative.  It may be a human to you, but not to me.  Murder is wrong, abortion is wrong, except in the case of rape.  Lie!  A beautifully constructed lie!  Truth has no exception, truth has no relation, truth is its own, and it is absolute.
            But I return to the question: what is truth?  The truth is that an unborn baby is a person, therefore, sacred.  Science proves it, history proves it, theology, philosophy, nature itself, and human experience proves it.  The truth was always clear, but when was it twisted?  It wasn’t in 1973.  Legalized abortion did not happen overnight.  It took time.  It began with a subtle, whispered lie couched in the philosophies of the day, it festered in the halls of justice and endless debates over slavery, it grew in strength in the propaganda of Nazi Germany, it screamed from the rooftops as Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood perfected their theology of a master race, it proliferated in the moral decay of the turbulent 60’s where personal responsibility was abandoned with the modernization of birth control.  Today, the fruit of this little . . . whispered . . . lie . . . is a small, lifeless child.  So tiny you can hold her in one hand.  Her limbs have been barbarically torn from her body, or her skin is burned beyond recognition by a saline injection, or the base of her skull is punctured with surgeon’s knife.  Her mother?  She will never be the same again.
            Can we stop the death cycle?  Can we legislate a human rights amendment?  Maybe, but it is going to take time.  One day, I hope to have a child, and I will tell him that he was wonderfully and fearfully made in the image of God.  Truth is like a whisper, you only hear it when you listen, but it must be said, and it will grow in the halls of justice as we take the abortion mills on the legal front, it will be nurtured as people are accepted, “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”  Martin Luther King, Jr.  It will proliferate as we recognize the value of children in our own families and claim personal responsibility for the same.  And perhaps, in time, we will win the abortionist and liberals, one at a time, day after day and show them by our love and by our actions that life is sacred and that truth is absolute.