McMINNVILLE, Ore. (BP)–“We can easily be cowed into submission by the force or fashionablity of new ideas without realizing their disastrous practical consequences for ordinary life,” observed Christian apologist Os Guinness.
When the U.S. Supreme Court rendered the Roe v. Wade decision on Jan. 22, 1973, it forced upon Americans the idea that the life of a pre-born child is expendable. For almost three decades, federal power has insured submission to this murderous concept. As a result, many have even come to embrace the idea as fashionable.
When the court concluded that it should be legal for a woman to abort her unborn child during the entirety of her pregnancy, I do not think they had an inkling of the Pandora’s Box they were opening. If they had truly understood the disastrous consequences their ruling would have for ordinary life, they might well have come to a different decision.
In agriculture, and in life, there is one inescapable truth — an individual, and a nation, will always reap what has been sown. With the Roe v. Wade decision — a seemingly narrow decision pertaining only to life in the womb — a single seed of death was sown. However, year after year it has germinated and brought forth fruit. After 29 years, we now have a crop of doom so pervasive that it dominates our society. Like the cursed kudzu that chokes the life out of vegetation in the South, the abortion vine now undermines the whole concept of the sanctity of life.
The death debate now extends to well outside the womb. Not only are pre-born babies candidates to have their lives snuffed out, but now newborns are also at risk. Peter Singer, tenured professor of bioethics at Princeton University, wrote in his book “Practical Ethics,” “Human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons…. The life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, or a dog, or a chimpanzee.” It is this view that leads Singer to conclude that parents who have given birth to a handicapped child should have up to 28 days to decide whether or not they will allow it to live.
Prior to Roe v. Wade, Singer would have been viewed as being on the fringes of American society. However, three decades removed from it, and he is teaching at a prestigious university and influencing the “ethics” of future leaders.
It is not only the pre-born and the newborn whose lives have lost value, but also the lives of children in general who have suffered as a result of Roe v. Wade.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Center of Child Abuse and Neglect and the National Analysis of Official Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting, the cases of reported child abuse in America have increased by well over 1000 percent since 1973. Coincidence? I think not. Once it became acceptable to kill a baby in the womb, children began to be viewed as less than a blessing. I once had a teen admit to me that in a fit of rage his mother had blurted out, “When I was pregnant with you, I wish I had gotten an abortion.”
The discussion in America is no longer about the sanctity of life; it now focuses on the quality of life. In Oregon, it is legal for a physician to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs for those wishing to end their lives if they feel a “terminal” illness will interrupt a “quality life.” If a person is on the state health insurance program, the government will even pay for the suicide.
A practice that is currently being debated in medical circles finds its roots directly in Roe v. Wade. The futile care or medical futility theory is a practice in which doctors give themselves the right to say no to wanted, life-extending medical treatment based on the doctor’s judgment of the patient’s probable quality of life. In other words, some physicians want the right to withhold treatment from a patient who they do not think will regain, in their view, a quality life. Hippocrates is rolling over in his grave.
Since the Supreme Court declared pre-born children to be expendable, the value of life in the United States has been plummeting like Enron stock. However, unlike the energy giant, life’s value in the United States has yet to bottom out. When it does, you had better hope yours meets the criteria for quality. If not, you too might be expendable.
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