By DONALD DeMARCO
No one can fulfill all of his potential. The potential is like an ocean compared with the few drops of water that can be actualized. Choosing in the presence of an infinity of choices can be daunting. We are, so to speak, condemned to be free. We have no other choice than to choose. Even despair is a choice.
How do we narrow the range of our choice so that we know what choices are best for us? There are three factors that make our choices realistic.
The first is “ability.”
We should not choose anything for which we have no ability. A person who is tone deaf cannot become a concert pianist. A blind person cannot be a baseball umpire. A man cannot give birth, nor can a woman inseminate her mate. This simple factor greatly reduces our range of choices.
The second factor is “obligation.”
“Thou shall not kill” places restrictions on what we may choose. The Christian is obliged to love. The student is obliged to study. The parents have the obligation to care for their children. A medical doctor has the obligation to practice medicine.
The third factor that reduces the vast field of the potential is “destiny.” Some people have a sense of their destiny at an early age. This sense may be correlated with God’s Will. Destiny tapped the shoulders of Francis of Assisi, Ludwig von Beethoven, John Keats, and many others. The many who do not have a clear sense of their destiny should pray that the road to their destiny become clearer.
Ability, obligation, and destiny bring limitless potential into the realm of what is proper for an individual person. On the other hand, ambition, selfishness, and pride can seduce a person to make choices that are not congruent with his or her best interest. The potential has the capacity to lure people into making counterproductive choices. Freedom of choice needs to be directed to freedom of personal fulfillment.
James Gunnarson, speaking on behalf of Campaign Life (Canada), recently reported the tragic death of a 19-year-old due to septic shock, a known risk of the chemical abortion pill. “The loss of young lives (including the unborn child),” he wrote, “with so much potential is always devastating. It leaves behind a void that cannot be filled.”
President Biden has stated that women need to have abortion so that “they can fulfill their God-given potential.” In so saying, he blithely skipped over the fact that giving birth to a child is a fulfillment of a woman’s God-given potential. But he also snuffs out the God-given potential of the unborn child. Some choices are not congruent with fulfilling potential.
In his biography of Marilyn Monroe, Jeffrey Meyers claims that the famous actress had as many as twelve abortions. What she really wanted was a child. No amount of glamour or glitz can make up for a lost baby. At the premier of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she was heard to mutter, “I killed my baby for this?” Marilyn died at age 36 of an apparent suicide. She was a victim of the lure of a potential that ruined her life. In the biopic, Blonde, the actress playing the part of Monroe sees her as “one of untapped maternal potential.”
Michelle Williams, in accepting her Golden Globe, proudly asserted that she would not have won the award “without employing my woman’s right to choose.” But will she always feel happy about something that can never love her, bring honor to her motherhood, and grow to her own womanhood?
Freedom of choice is an empty expression when it fails to take into consideration the inherent good of the potential a woman seeks to fulfill. Let women fulfill their potential, but the potential that serves their real needs as human beings.
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