It is a human tendency not to value something until it is under assault or lost, but in the case of abortion, there is little evidence to suggest that the American public, or mainstream media, is concerned with a blatant assault on the right to life of 2,246 children.

When reports surfaced that the remains of 2,246 aborted children were found in the garage and later the vehicle of former abortionist Ulrich Klopfer, Americans were horrified. But not for the reason one might think. As the news cycle passed by it was seen that Americans were not horrified by the fact that innocent children had been killed, but by the fact that the remains had been unknowingly kept by an abortionist.

Ulrich Klopfer (YouTube screen grab)

The gruesome discovery in Klopfer’s garage, and the national response, is a glaring reflection that society has chosen to hide its eyes from such crimes. Rather than directly confronting the fact that thousands of lives had been lost through the practice of abortion, Americans chose to look the other way and ask why Indiana’s most prolific abortionist would not dispose of the remains.

That realization should cause people to shudder. But the lack of media attention the story has received makes it feel as though no one noticed any injustice in the legalized active killing of 2,246 children.

A quick google search will show that the story surrounding Klopfer has thus far received little attention on national television news broadcasts, with the large majority of coverage coming from local news outlets. One would think that an acceptable approach to finding the remains of 2,246 aborted children would be holding the nationwide abortion industry accountable for their business practices and nationally illustrating the reality of what abortion is, the active practice of ending indefensible human life, but that has yet to be seen.

This is not the first time that fetal remains have been discovered to be kept after being aborted. Last year in Detroit multiple funeral homes were found to have over 60 fetal remains and the clinic of former abortionist Kermit Gosnell was described by Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams as filled with “rotting bodies, fetal remains, the smell of urine throughout, blood-stained.”

Without implementing policies and guidelines which will restrict the inhumane treatment of fetal remains after an abortion nothing will stop abortionists inhumanely treating preborn infants in the future. A simple truth must be accepted, abortionists should not be allowed to hide infant bodies in their garages, throw them into landfills, or burn them for fuel.

A Gallup poll in 2013 found that American’s consider individual freedoms the nation’s top virtue. Such knowledge could lead one to assume that a people who consider individual freedoms as the nation’s top virtue would seek to respect and enhance the freedom of others. Yet, while such sentiments might be held by many, the lack of interest in the murderous actions of Klopfer have shown that Americans are desensitized to violence against the preborn, exposing a incomprehension of the most basic individual freedom, the right to life.

Too much media exposure to violence through television, movies, and video games, has been linked to desensitization to real-life violence. Such findings could be correlated to a lack of an emotional and rational response to the issue of abortion and stories like that of Klopfer as a study conducted by the University of Michigan, the University of Amsterdam, and Iowa State University, has found that "people exposed to media violence become ‘comfortably numb’ to the pain and suffering of others and are consequently less helpful" in dangerous situations.

As society continually becomes more desensitized to violence, the threshold for potential shock value will continually escalate, leading some to question at what point will society stop and recognize the amount of widespread desensitization occurring.

Until then pro-life Americans will continually ask themselves:

How many more women are going to bleed out and die in an abortion facility?

How many more women will have to need a hysterectomy because of a botched abortion?

How many more infants who survived an abortion will be left screaming on a table before they die?

Only after confronting the devastating truth’s hidden behind false narratives surrounding abortion can society begin to reverse the real-life damages that have been seemingly tolerated.

Viktor Fankl, a renowned Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, suggested in his book Man’s Search for Meaning that “the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” While it is unlikely a Statue of Responsibility will ever be constructed on the West Coast, an important lesson can be learned.

Liberty cannot be sustained without responsibility. If the American public desires to enjoy the blessings of liberty, and pass liberty on to following generations, it must first recognize and embrace the responsibility of protecting all human life from its earliest stages, to the final stages, of development.

Unfortunately, observing the current news cycle one can see that Americans are more concerned with their illiterate historical representation of Christopher Columbus, or the idea that climate change is the “battle of our time,” rather than accepting responsibility for the fact that Americans have allowed over 60 million children to be killed since 1973.

Ryan Neuhaus is a Regional Coordinator with Students for Life of America