An article from The Telegraph from three years ago has recently been making waves. It reports that an article entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?” appeared in The Journal of Medical Ethics, written by an Oxford professor of Ethics, Julian Savulescu . If you have the stomach for it, you can read it here.
The truly hideous “bioethicist” from Princeton, Peter Singer, has long been a proponent of allowing the extermination of children after birth, and it appears he has a fan club that is gathering steam for the big campaign. This is one of those times when an “I told you so” is truly not satisfying. People laugh when you talk about a slippery slope, then you see “medical ethicists” publish this in a reputable medical journal. If you follow the logic, then their argument makes sense. If we agree that a person’s humanity is defined by their ability to survive on their own (viability), then a newborn is no different than a baby in utero, and you can legally abort a pre-born baby during all three trimesters in the US.
Hmm, who else is dependent upon others for life? Children under the age of 6 would probably die of starvation, exposure, or by accident if you turned them out in to the world on their own. So, too, would most students who major in Ethics, but I digress. Alzheimer’s patients, mentally disabled people, physically disabled people, and so many more would fit the same criteria that they are advancing. If it is not a matter of humans becoming human at the moment of conception (when their DNA becomes distinctly their own) and respecting them simply because they are created in the image of God, and we choose to see human life as no different than that of the animal kingdom, red in tooth and claw, then we are truly lost.
If one’s worth is based on another party’s opinion of their viability and relative convenience or utility, then all bets are off. The only thing that keeps us from going the way of other civilizations and accepting wholesale slaughter of “inconvenient people” is the much maligned Christian ethos. Christianity is the only thing that has ever changed that in any civilization. This argument isn’t new. In every pre-Christian society, upon that society’s baptism, infanticide is one of the first things to go. Infanticide’s return is also a bellwether that a post-Christian era has begun- for example, most of our “modern” abortion techniques were pioneered by Nazi doctors.
The difference here is that we aren’t talking about the way that your great-grandparents ignored the Nazi genocide or about how people in ancient civilizations were so barbaric; we are talking about you. How will you respond? This isn’t a drill. This is really happening. Will you protect the defenseless and the weakest among us and be considered a hero to future generations or will you be one whose grandchildren scratch their heads about and wonder how you could have tolerated such an evil? Who do you think the Enemy is?
On one side, there are those who are ready to call the killing of newborn children morally permissible. They claim to be champions of “the very values of a liberal society”, if you believe Professor Savulescu. He knows what side he is on and the gods that he serves. They are the gods of liberalism, convenience, and utility. On the other, there are those that think that all life, even that deemed less than perfect, is a miracle and a gift. The God they serve is the essence of beauty, mercy, and love. At the very least, people in this camp are smart enough to realize that being on the “Worthy of Life” list today doesn’t ensure your spot there tomorrow.
The battle lines are clearly drawn. It’s time to plant your flag.
Contumacia 