Allen Webster

Topic(s): Children, Family, Moral Issues, Youth

Links to this entire series:

• Abortion Wrongs: Part 1
• Abortion Wrongs: Part 2
• Abortion Wrongs: Part 3
• Abortion Wrongs: Part 4
• Abortion Wrongs: Part 5

What about in cases of handicapped children? (continued):

It helps to understand what most who push for abortion in education and the media have as a basic philosophy of life. They are humanists; that is, they have an atheistic worldview where man is his own god (cf. Judges 17:6). He rules his life and determines his destiny. Man is a highly-evolved, tool-using animal whose value is measured by his productivity. The unborn is not productive to society, and if he will never be able to function normally, he is undesirable. From a humanist perspective, taking a “use-less” life is not immoral, it’s practical.

• The Australian ethicist, Peter Singer, wrote that the sanctity-of-life view, the “religious mumbo-jumbo,” should be stripped away. “Species membership in Homo-sapiens is not morally relevant.” If we “compare a dog or a pig to a severely defective infant,” he said, “we often find the non-human to have superior capacities.” To Singer, quality of life is the only guide.[1]

• Joseph Fletcher suggested using the I.Q. measurement and allow those with an I.Q. under 20 or perhaps 40 to be declared “non-human.”
• They followed Nobel Laureate, James Watson, the man who cracked the genetic code: “Because of the present limits of such detection methods, most birth defects are not discovered until birth. If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice ...the doctor could allow the child to die, if the parents so choose, and save a lot of misery and suffering.”[2]

Save a lot of misery and suffering?? Death by starvation, dehydration, and exposure is hardly pain-free. Should we say that Hitler was ahead of his time, or that we have regressed to him?

THE PARADOX OF MODERN THINKING

Save the rivers from industry!
Save the mountains from the strip-mines!
Save the redwoods from the woodsman!
Save the earth from her polluters!
But kill the babies in their mothers.

Save the whooping cranes! Save the wolves!
Save the blackbirds! Save the gators!
But kill the baby (spare the rapist father).

Save the seal pups! Save the fur bearers!
Save the hawks! Save even the vultures and the crows!
But kill the babies at the whim of their mother.

Save the whales! Save the beaver! Save the snail darter!
Save the murderers, terrorists, and assassins!
But kill the babies, the weak and the defective.

Kill the unwanted babies! Kill the senile grandfathers!
Kill the deformed and the retarded!
Kill the mentally and terminally ill![3]

Another more practical reason to avoid abortion in such cases is that parents emotionally handle the abortion of a handicapped baby very poorly. One study reported maternal depression of 92% and paternal depression of 82%, plus a 30% incidence of marital separation after the abortion.[4]

SOME HOPEFUL NEWS

The Pro-Life Movement in our country is making progress.

• According to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll in May, 1999: 16% of Americans believe abortion should be legal for any reason at any time during pregnancy and 55% of American believe abortion should be legal only to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest.
• According to a Gallup Poll in January, 2001: People who considered themselves to be pro-life rose from 33% to 43% in the past five years, and people who considered themselves to be pro-choice declined from 56% to 48%.

Still, there is much work to be done. John Adams sent a simple letter to the Continental Congress during the battle for independence with three questions:

• Is anyone there?

• Does anyone see?

• Does anyone care?

Martin Niemoller was a preacher of a church in Germany in the 1930s. Eventually, Niemoller became one of the millions of victims arrested and killed in Hitler’s concentration camps. Shortly before his death, he wrote:

In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was Protestant. And then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Niemoller learned too late that indifference kills. We can murder by arranging a death, or we can murder by allowing a death (1 John 3:16-18). Is your voice being heard in the abortion battle?[5] Is your vote ever cast for a pro-choice candidate when a pro-life candidate is available? Could there be any issue more important than abortion in any election? Party loyalty or economic philosophies must take a backseat to moral issues. Solomon’s statement needs considering in voting booths: “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Prov. 14:34). “Soldiers of Christ arise and put your armor on.”

(See Previous Article: Abortion Wrongs: Part 4)