People Who Think Killing Babies for Pleasure is OK

If you've ever listened to a discussion on how moral values are universal you may have heard someone use the example of "killing babies for pleasure is always wrong." The example is a useful tool, as people recognize that any person who takes of a young, innocent life just to extend their own pleasure can never claim the moral high ground. It doesn't matter if you are talking about ancient Assyrians, Aztec priests, or modern pedophiles that kill children after they abuse them, it's always wrong. It's wrong in every location and at every point in history. It's wrong no matter if other people believe it's right or the government makes it legal to do so.

Most sane people agree with the precept above. But, what if no one can see the child that's being killed? Does it change the immorality of the act? I think most people would agree that being able to see the child doesn't matter. Wrong is wrong.

I offer this example because there are those in society who seem to believe that in certain instances it is OK to kill a baby to increase the level of pleasure one has – and that's when the life of the mother to be is made less pleasurable because caring for her child will cause her inconvenience. It makes her life more difficult, i.e. less pleasurable. Therefore, it is argued by pro-abortion advocates that the mother should kill the baby before he or she is born.

Sometimes abortions are counseled because the child suffers from a medical condition or genetic abnormality, such as Down's syndrome. Atheist Richard Dawkins recently counseled an expectant mother of a child with Down's syndrome to "Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice." Immoral? Why? Countless families of Down's syndrome children have confirmed how happy and loving those kids are. Dawkins' comments were justifiably vilified by these families, but there are many doctors who would counsel expectant parents similarly.

There are more egregious reasons people give for aborting their children. By far the most common reason to abort a child is that the mother wasn't planning to become pregnant. She is concerned that her life will be fundamentally changed by having a child.  I agree that it will. However, even if she cannot support the baby, adoption is another option. The only reason to select abortion is to increase the level of pleasure in the mother's life. That's really it. Yet, this is advocated as a viable option by many people in our society today.

In fact, an interesting thing is occurring in the US midterm elections. Given that President Obama's ratings are in the gutter, Democrats who are running for office are making abortion a primary component of their campaigns. The Democratic candidate for Senate in Colorado exemplifies this approach. Senator Mark Udall has made his pro-abortion plank basically the only thing he talks about in the campaign, so much so that the press has dubbed him "Mark Uterus." The Los Angeles Times, in a curious coincidence of timing, ran two front page stories back to back highlighting the "Abortion Wars" plus an editorial, all just a few weeks prior to the election. Of course The Times knows they must get women out to vote in a midterm election if Democrats want to maintain control of the Senate and other offices.

But all the talk of women's rights is simply smoke and mirrors. Women have a right to… what exactly? They may have some control over their own bodies, but not at any expense, just as our free speech rights end when we falsely shout "fire" and endanger other human beings. These women want the "right" to kill a human being so they are not inconvenienced for nine months. They feel their lives will be better; they will be happier and have less responsibility, less embarrassment. To me it sounds like they want to kill a baby so they may enjoy certain benefits that accompany not being pregnant. But killing babies to increase pleasure is wrong, it's always wrong. It's just as wrong as the mother who gave birth but left the child to drown in the toilet and then waked away free on a suspended sentence.

Once killing the defenseless for convenience is justified, these kinds of hideous results follow. Killing babies to allow your own pleasure is clearly immoral. It's time more people were consistent on that point.

Why Understanding the Imago Dei is More Crucial than Ever

In the very beginning of the Bible, it states that man is created in God's image. In fact, the phrase is repeated three times in Genesis 1:26-27, which is the ancient Jewish equivalent of typing in all caps to underscore the point. Theologians throughout the ages use the Latin imago Dei when speaking of this unique aspect of human creation, however most people are still a bit fuzzy as to what being made in the image of God means.

Some people misunderstand the concept of being made in God's image to mean that God modeled our physical attributes after his own. This is a mistake as Jesus clearly taught that God is not physical but a spirit (John 4:24). As I've explained elsewhere, bearing the image of God means that humans are fundamentally different from every other animal created on the earth. Part of the imago Dei is the capability we have to reason and the ability to exercise our free will and make meaningful choices.

Recently, though, asked a question that I expect many other Christians may have about this definition. A person asked "What about those who are mentally ill, though? How can they bear God's image if they lack the ability to reason or make decisions for themselves?" This is a good question that reveals bias of our modern culture that has larger implications across a variety of moral issues.

More Than a List of Skills

Today, much of what is valued in society is based on "what can you do for me" or "what skills do you have" mentality. So, it may be natural for people to assume that the imago Dei is measured by one's ability to reason, thus the question above about the mentally impaired. But one isn't considered a person because of one's ability but by nature of being human. We are designed to reflect God's image in ourselves and the design doesn't change even if we cannot properly execute the elements implicit in that. For example, a car is a vehicle whose design and purpose is to move across land, while a boat is a vehicle whose deign and purpose is to move across the water. The can may have a broken axle or the boat a hole in its side that prevent it from executing its normal function, but no one would look at a boat with a hole and say that it changes its function. Boats cannot move across the land unaided because so doing is counter to all of its design. The vehicle may need repair but one can quickly see whether it is a land or sea vehicle.

The reason this concept of design and purpose (what's known in philosophy as the telos or end purpose of a thing) is that it is crucial to the dignity of all human persons. It is not merely the mentally-ill who cannot reason, but the embryo has not yet developed reasoning capacity either. If the imago Dei doesn't apply to the embryo, then why should Christians oppose abortion? However, if the telos of the embryo is a functioning, rational adult who can make free decisions and can have a spiritual sensitivity, then the embryo shows as much uniqueness as any other human being. It is human nature to be social, to be creative, to be relational, to be rational, to have a sense of the moral, and to be spiritual. All of these reflect God's character and all sit in distinction to other animals in creation.  And every being that so reflects God's image in this way is intrinsically valuable because God values these things.

Photo courtesy diegain and again and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Keep Your Maybes Away from Our Babies - Arguing when Life Begins

It is a common bromide for people to claim that taking a secular approach to moral issues is better since secular positions aren't as biased by dogma. They claim religion will yield conclusions that are unscientific and unproven. The abortion debate is a perfect example, with the pro-abortion side creating placards of "keep your rosaries off my ovaries" and other nonsense.

However, in the last couple of weeks it has been telling how much pro-abortion supporters don't want to face science; they are looking increasingly desperate in their attempts to shove the question of when a human life begins into the domain of dogma. The whole thing started when Florida Senator Marco Rubio made the statement, "Science is settled — it's not even a consensus, it is a unanimity, that human life begins at conception."1

Rubio is right, of course. Take any human being and trace their point of origin and that being begins his or her existence at the point of conception. A fertilized egg, left to its natural progression, has all the information within itself to develop into a fully functional human being. Pulling just one quote from many, The Harper Collins Illustrated Medical Dictionary defines an embryo as "An organism in the earliest stage of development; in a man, from the time of conception to the end of the second month in the uterus."2 This seems like a no-brainer, right?

As you can imagine, the pro-abortion crowd went into overdrive to try and counter Rubio's assertion. Phillip Bump of the Washington Post went to a single source (the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' Hal C Lawrence, III, MD) and derived a comment of when pregnancy begins, not life. Bump then concludes, "'Life' is something of a philosophical question."3 Planned Parenthood's president Cecile Richards at first refused to answer the question of when life begins, claiming it is a question "that will be debated through the centuries."4 She then said that for her her three children weren't alive until they were born.

While folks like Mollie Hemingway over at the Federalist has done a good job taking apart the claim of no scientific consensus, I wanted to approach the view from another angle. If the beginning of life is something that can be debated and relativized for each person, then it stands to reason that the end of life can also. If science cannot determine if a human zygote is alive, then they cannot identify the clear signs of life at all. So, does that mean that death is a "philosophical" question that doctors cannot answer? Should doctors refrain from judging a person who claims his beloved wife is not dead? How can one pronounce a scientific assessment of death, given all its ramifications, for such a philosophical issue? Perhaps every hospital should have a staff philosopher on hand to help declare things alive and things dead!

Determining life is actually easier than determining death, as two separate entities (egg and sperm) come together to form a new thing. Death doesn't always offer such a clear hallmark; there are cases where it is difficult to determine whether or not a person is dead. However, those are usually dealing with rare situations involving minutes or hours. A person who is dead for a week is definitively dead. In that sense it makes it even less plausible to beg off the beginning of life as "philosophical" while trying to retain a medical standard for the cessation of life.

It's obvious that pro-abortion advocates are running scared in this line of questioning. They are making bad excuses and trying hard to marginalize a significant question of human existence for political and profit motives. They are trying to create a new dogma about life, while seeking to ignore the clear science that agree with the position of those who hold to the biblical view of human life beginning with conception.

References

1 "Rubio: It's 'the left' that denies 'scientific consensus' — on abortion." Speed Reads. THE WEEK Publications, Inc. Web. 15 May 2014 http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/261630/speedreads-rubio-its-the-left-that-denies-scientific-consensus--on-abortion Accessed 20 June 2014.

2 Dox, Ida G. et al. The Harper Collins Illustrated Medical Dictionary. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. 146 Taken from "Life Begins at Fertilization." Princeton University. Web. https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html

3 Bump, Philip. "Marco Rubio demanded people look at the science on abortion. So we did." The Washington Post. Web. 15 May 2014.. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/05/15/marco-rubio-demanded-people-look-at-the-science-on-abortion-so-we-did/ Accessed 20 June 2014.

4 Ernst, Douglas. "Planned Parenthood president: Start of life not ‘really relevant' to abortion discussions." The Washington Times. 28 Feb. 2014. Web. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/28/planned-parenthood-president-start-life-not-really/ Accessed 20 June 2014.

NOW and Abortion - A Study in Inconsistency

         

Last week, I had said that I hold to Christianity because it is both internally and externally coherent. Part of that internal coherency is the fact that it stays consistent in its values and teachings when they are applied to different situations. This is not always true of other movements, especially those who claim to take the moral high ground, but state that abortion is somehow permissible. Here are a couple of examples of how inconsistency looks.

A few years ago, when the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was making headlines daily, I came across a man protesting the U.S. involvement in a busy shopping area. Wanting to understand his position better, I approached him and began to ask him about his views. Unfortunately, he was more interested in shouting hyperbole than discussing the situation rationally. He wanted to make a big show of me so everyone would look, but he had no arguments, just accusations. (I also noticed that he got pretty mad, which I thought was ironic.)

Now, you don't have to be a scholar to understand how inconsistent it is to become violent while protesting for peace. But it seems more and more that people really don't think through their positions on matters, especially those dealing with the big questions of life. The recent debate over the war on Iraq is a good example of this.

An Issue of Life and Death

Although I don't think it proper in this space to debate the merits or flaws of the U.S. decision, I would like to look at some of the rhetoric voiced by certain organizations and see how truly coherent the Christian worldview is. No matter what side of the debate you were on - pro or con - it was evident that all understood we were dealing with life and death issues here. The National Organization for Women (NOW) recognized that as well when they wrote their open letter to President Bush objecting to the war. (Although the letter is no longer available on their site, you can read it via the Internet Archive's page here.) In that letter they make some interesting claims. For example, the letter states "Even more troubling are the costs in human lives and suffering that war will cause. Our women and men in the armed forces, though they understand the risks of enlisting, should not be put in harm's way unnecessarily."

NOW felt that U.S. soldiers' lives should be protected as much as possible, even to the extent that it would be acceptiable to leave cruel regimes such as the Taliban and Saddam Hussain's Baathists in power. Realize that the Taliban were no friends of women or women's rights. Their list of atrocities committed against women prior to the U.S. invasion is well documented. NOW says they understand the fact that soldiers are voluntarily enlisting into the armed forces and the normal expectation of enlistees should include the possibility of war. Yet they also feel we should err on the side of caution, because protecting life is of primary importance.

Not All Life and Death Issues are on the Battlefield

But, there is another life and death issue where many of these same choices come into play: abortion. How consistent is NOW's position in this instance? Not very. Protecting life isn't the primary concern for NOW in the abortion debate, a woman's choice is. Erring on the side of caution is not an option, even as medical science continues to allow babies to stay viable at earlier and earlier gestation.

The NOW letter continued, "Civilians in combat zones do not voluntarily take such risks... The killing and maiming of innocent people as well as the destruction of Iraq's physical and social infrastructure are inevitable in a massive pre-emptive military strike." The argument here is that some civilians (people who happen to live in Iraq but are not an immediate threat to the United States) will be hurt by the fighting and this is wrong, even to obtain a political objective such as overthrowing a despot and torturer such as Saddam. The political objectives are not worth the cost to life.

However, when looking at abortion, they don't feel the same way. NOW is very clear that a woman should maintain the right to eliminate the life inside of her no matter what the reason, and they'll do what ever it takes to achieve this political objective. Although the life inside a woman is an innocent, the baby's well being is not an issue. It has merely gotten in the way of the woman and her objectives in life, and because it intrudes, it should be killed.

Life Versus Potential Life

Some may object to my argument, saying that we're talking about two different issues. After all, NOW doesn't consider a pre-born baby a human life, but rather "potential life". While it is true that NOW's rhetoric differentiates the unborn from individuals who are already born, their reasons for doing so are the point of my objection. As I've pointed out, NOW says they believe that where life and death is involved, we should err on the side of caution, yet they don't approach the question of when life begins this way. They say they believe political motivations should be of secondary importance to risking lives, yet political concerns play a chief role in why they won't consider any type of limitation on any abortion procedures. Lastly, even though certain individuals (such as the Afghan citizenry) may endure long term suffering at the hands of a ruthless regime, NOW says there must be more at stake before we risk innocent lives in trying to oust that regime. How unfortunate that NOW refuses to see the innocent lives of the unborn that are being sacrificed merely to avoid the inconvenience they may cause in a person's life.

Britain Looks to Soylent Green Energy

The headline read like something out of a horror novel. Certainly this wasn't what it seemed, right? It must be satire, a Modest Proposal updated for the 21st century. Yet, there is was in the respected UK Telegraph for all to read: "Aborted babies incinerated to heat UK hospitals."

Image courtesy Bryan Ward

The story tells of how the remains of over 15,000 aborted or miscarried babies were labeled as "clinical waste" and incinerated in hospital "waste-to-energy" facilities while the mothers of those babies that were miscarried were simply told their babies' remains were cremated, with the hospitals never asking the parents how they would like their children's remand to be handled.

The British healthcare system is run through their government under the label of the National Health Service or the NHS. NHS Trusts are the public corporations that run the hospitals on behalf of the NHS and must answer to the UK's Department of Health. 27 NHS Trusts were found to have incinerated aborted babies over the last two years, according to the British television program Dispatches. This was not a rogue hospital making an error in judgment but a systemic approach to desecrating human remains throughout the government healthcare system.

How can such hideousness and callous disregard happen in an advanced society? Part of the problem stems from the rhetoric that has permeated the abortion wars. We're told over and over that fetuses are nothing more than "a clump of cells" or "a mass of tissue." So, even if a young couple was hoping to start a family but suffer the tragic loss of miscarriage, you cannot have a service for a mass of tissue. You simply dispose of it, like a removed appendix.1

This is certainly part of the problem, but it isn't all of it. The emphasis on finding new ways to "go green" reduce waste and carbon emissions plays into the decision as well.  This document published by the NHS's Sustainable Development Unit gives us a better understanding. In part, it reads:

Although domestic waste is by far the largest proportion of NHS total waste, clinical/hazardous waste is the most costly to dispose of: £380-450 per tonne for non-burn alternative technology (i.e. autoclave/microwaves etc) and £800-1,000 per tonne for hazardous/pharmaceutical waste high temperature incineration. As waste created by the NHS continues to rise, both by tonnage and by disposal cost, this is an area where investment in sound management can save money and reduce carbon emissions. The most important principle in waste management is to apply the waste hierarchy of reduce, reuse, recycle, energy recovery – with disposal being the least favourable option (emphasis added).

So the push by the NHS was to save money, especially on clinical waste which is the most costly, and to reduce carbon emissions. The answer is simple: go green by not burning coal, but burning bodies. The UK has pioneered the use of Soylent Green Energy, where we protect the environment at the cost of human dignity.

Western culture is now beginning to suffer from the ramifications of its own teachings. We're told that people don't bear the image of God but are simply another evolutionary accident, simply another kind of animal. We're told that the miracle of bringing new life into the world is only special if the parents to be wanted that child, and only then if it meets factory specification. We're told that the only truly valuable thing in the world is the world itself, so we had better do everything possible to make it as though no humans even live on the planet. Then, when people take those teachings seriously, we become aghast at the horrific results. Ideas matter and I shudder to think of what other repulsions await us when people start believing what they've been teaching.

References

1. I would object to even the burning of amputated organs such as appendixes to heat hospitals. That is simply because these are not like medical sponges, discarded gauze, or other disposables that are byproducts of modern medical care. These organs were a part of a human being, and as such they are unique. We don't need funerals for them, but we do need to recognize that the owner has suffered a loss and thus they should be disposed of with at least some distinctio

Does Religious Liberty End When Business Begins?

Recently, the Los Angeles Times ran an Op-Ed piece once again denouncing the idea that privately-owned companies such as Hobby Lobby can set policy that reflects their deeply held moral convictions when that conviction is set at odds with some government mandate. Of course, the question wasn't phrased that way. David Gans wrote "Are secular, for-profit corporations free to violate the rights of their employees by claiming that the law violates their corporate religious conscience? That's the big question at the heart of the two blockbuster challenges to a key provision of Obamacare that will be heard by the Supreme Court next week."

As you can see, there's bias even in the way Gans chose to word the question. There is no violation of employees rights if one works for Hobby Lobby. Their employees are completely free to exercise any right they have, including their choice to use abortifacient drugs. They simply have to pay of that right themselves, instead of asking the company to do so.

While I hold a very firm stand on the immorality of elective abortion, that isn't the main idea I am concerned about in this article. My bigger concern is that much of the Western world has bought into the idea that religious beliefs are not anything truly important. Most people think that while individuals may feel passionately about their religious convictions, such beliefs are akin to the passion other people feel for a favorite sports team or music artist. These fan-addicts see themselves through their fandom and any criticism of their object of adoration will lead to hard feelings and harsh words.

Such thinking is ignorant in the extreme. No matter what one's religious persuasion is, one's understanding of truth and morality are shaped by one's religious views. This includes even those who would say they are "nones, " atheists, or humanists. As I've explained before, in order to make sense of the world, everyone has some kind of worldview. Thus, an atheists lack of belief in God will color his understanding of right and wrong as much as a Christian's understanding of God will color his. No one is immune to this.

The crucial respect for religious beliefs is why the pilgrims left Europe and endured suffering and pain to establish a society that would recognize that respect. It is why when the United States was founded the people demanded that the Constitution contain a statement guaranteeing the free exercise of religion without government intrusion.

The problem becomes when people trivialize those foundations of right and wrong, especially when it comes to business owners. In the article above, Gans claims "Corporations lack the basic human capacities — reason, dignity and conscience — at the core of the free exercise right. Corporations cannot pray, do not express devotion to God and do not have a religious conscience." I think Gans claims too much here. If corporations don't have religious conscience, then they have no conscience at all. There is no distinction between a religious conscience and a secular one, except for the basis of the worldview from which it is based. Therefore, if one were to take Gans' view of corporations as automatons that lack any kind of reason, dignity, and conscience, then Enron is morally equal to Tom's Shoes and we should quit pressuring manufacturers to care about pollution. A corporation is equal to the machines that it employs and nothing more.

Of course, no one would hold to such ridiculous views. We understand that behind corporations there are real people and those people don't become autonomous simply because they own a company. To cheer the principled ecological convictions of a company and then turn around and decry the principled religious convictions of another is contradictory. Both are morality based and both flow from the worldview of the company's owners. By seeking to gut Hobby Lobby's stance against paying for abortifacient drugs, we are in danger of gutting any grounding for holding companies accountable at all.

Answering Arguments for Abortion: "We'd Mess Up Three Lives"

Recently, a media commentator talked about how he and his girlfriend at that time had decided to have an abortion after she found out she was pregnant. He claimed that "abortion saved my life." Many times we hear that an abortion is necessary not only for the mother, but for the child and the father, too. It is said that all three lives would be destroyed if the pregnancy were to continue. Here's why such a claim fails.

12 Years a Slave and a Different Perspective

I recently watched the movie 12 Years a Slave.  It was intense, but extremely well done.  And, it was an accurate depiction of what it means to be at the pinnacle of human objectification. 

Just as slavery in America, kidnapping, human trafficking, genocide, or eugenics, have a primary root in treating an individual as an object, those that have perpetrated these evils have chosen to, in whatever capacity, not treat them as being valuable in and of themselves.  When we see these sorts of injustices occur, at least on screen, there is something that tears us apart at the core of who we are.  That abysmal and ugly discomfort we get when we watch a movie like 12 Years a Slave is at full discord with something deep within us: the belief that human life is exceptionally invaluable. 

Because human life is so invaluable, it is clearly wrong to exploit other human beings for our own potential financial gain or success. 

There was only one other thing I found more disturbing than the objectification.  As I watched the film, it presented the varying sentiments concerning American slavery from all ends of the spectrum.  It showed the Deep South drenched in oppression and showed the North in an ideal and colorblind society.  What was peculiar wasn't necessarily these extremes, but the in-between, like a scene of kidnapping occurring right in Washington D.C. with the Capitol building close by in the background.  It was appalling to think that of all places such evil could happen, it occurred right under the nose of people that had the very power to do something about it.  The in-between was not just among the North and South.  The movie also depicted merciless slave owners and benevolent masters.  But unfortunately, even among the kindhearted, some chose to shun what was right and bury it deep within them.  That is what struck me with anger.  Some masters genuinely seemed, even if fleetingly, to come to grips with the full weight of their actions.  And yet, they still choose to treat others with depravity.  It was the silence among those who knew what was right and chose not to stand up for the right thing that tears at your soul in this film.  It is the benevolent master, who, though benevolent, still chooses to ignore exacting justice and keep a man a slave.  He ignores a woman being torn from her children and slaves sold naked.

Because human lives are at stake, it is clearly wrong to stay silent or permit treating human beings as objects – bartered or sold off for good.

The two affirming takeaways I got from the film made me question sentiments on the unborn.  I heard the analogues alongside of some popular arguments I’ve heard in favor of abortion:

“Women have a right to choose what happens to their own bodies.”

“I do what I want with my property.”

“If she is going to school or starting a career, she should not have to have the baby.”

“If I can’t have slaves, then what will I do?”

“It is not right for me to have an abortion, but it’s not right to force that on someone else.”

“I would never own slaves myself, but it’s not my place to tell them they cannot own slaves.”

What is the unborn?  It is a human being, but it has no voice.  And in the spirit of the law, it is a disposable object.

Who Should Be Able to Speak in the Abortion Debate?

During her filibuster to try and stop the Texas abortion bill that was just signed into law, Texas state Senator Wendy Davis said, "This legislating is being done and voted on—look around the room—primarily by men." In making that statement, Davis invoked an argument that has been used many times in the abortion debate: that since men cannot get pregnant they lack the real knowledge of what abortion means for women. A blogger at the Abortion Gang web site makes the same claim even more clearly when she writes:

"I want to silence all the male voices in the abortion discussion… In fact, the majority of persons in government who are anti-choice, are men. And none of them can get pregnant. The people who are making decisions that affect the lives of women, CAN'T EVEN GET PREGNANT! And so, I want to silence the voices of all men." (Emphasis in the original.)

The interesting thing, though, was that the Davis clip was featured on Rachel Maddow's news talk show on MSNBC. If you don't know, Maddow is an open lesbian who says she's in a committed relationship with her partner, Susan Mikula. So, other than spending a lot of money on insemination treatments, Maddow has the exact same chance of getting pregnant as any man in the Texas state government: none at all. Yet, Maddow felt she was quite in the right to discuss the issue and lead with this argument by Davis.

If pro-abortion supporters like Davis and the Abortion Gang are going to argue that the opinion of someone who cannot get pregnant should count less than those who can, then thy should be consistent and ban lesbians from the debate. In fact, they should have no infertile women or post-menopausal women speak to the issue, either.

It is clear that a standard such as the ability to get pregnant falls woefully short of a good argument in whether such a bill as was before the Texas representatives should be passed. Davis knows this and she was hoping to trade on people's emotions rather than making real arguments. Maddow seems to have bought it, even though her actions in engaging with the debate directly contradict the point that Davis implies. Such contradictions are worthy to be ignored.

Protecting the Value of Life

My newly born granddaughter is over at the house this week and this morning I awoke to the sounds of the hungry girl crying. I loved the sound. It isn't that I would like to see her upset; at three weeks, crying is really the only way she can communicate. To me, the sound of a newborn's cry is a confirmation of life. It's an echo of her first cries in the delivery room and when it fills my house I take a certain kind of joy in knowing that our family will continue, that life has been passed on. It's how things should be.

Photo courtesy Gianni1wiki

As loving parents, my son wants only the best for his daughter. He cares about responding when she cries. He wants to make sure she's getting the best nutrition and the proper rest. He performs diaper changes so she won't get a rash. As she grows, her needs and the proper responses to them will change, but the motivation is the same: he wants to provide the best environment for her flourish. However, we as a society are corroding some of the necessary conditions for human flourishing and it worries me.

In its constant pull away from its Christian moorings, today's culture is blind to the damage it causes to all human life. The continuing horrors being disclosed from abortionist Kermit Gosnell's murder trial, the aftermath of the Boston terrorism attacks, and the general elevation of the individual's desire for pleasure over the best interests of the community are all symptoms that a culture that once held to a moral framework informed by Christian values has turned its face from that foundation and now seeks something else.

 This becomes all the more evident when we compare some of the hot button issues of today with their counterparts in pre-Christian societies. Ancient Rome was the pinnacle of technology and living in its day. It had successfully conquered the world. Its citizens then enjoyed an unparalleled era of Pax Romana—200 years of peace. However, in this time of comfort and leisure the Romans didn't think twice about its degradation of human life. Parents of babies who were considered less than desirable were killed, offered as sacrifices, or left out by the Tiber to die of exposure. Historian Alvin J. Schmidt reports, "So common was infanticide that Polybius (205? – 118 B.C.) blamed the population decline of ancient Greece on it (Histories 6)."1 Schmidt also tells of how the Romans practiced abortion for the sake of wealth and convenience2 and encouraged suicide as a more noble way to die than through natural causes.

Of course the Roman trivializing of life is nowhere more evident than in the Roman Gladiatorial games. Using human beings as sport because they were slaves or held religious views that were considered improper to the state is something we would consider barbaric today. But such actions were a natural conclusion to a worldview that places the individual's happiness above the life of another. Most people don't realize it was because of the act of one brave Christian martyr that the Gladiatorial games ceased within five years of his stand.

I write all this because it is too easy to see how we are falling back into a trap of trivializing life. Abortion today is framed as a political issue, but no one bothers to remember why Christianity sought to eliminate it. Kermit Gosnell shows how debased one can become when his worldview objectifies the beginning of human life as a product or choice to be had or not. The terrorists in Boston cared not one whit for the value of their victims' lives. They wanted their own position to be heard no matter the cost.

In our modern age, we've forgotten that the Christian principles that shaped our society also transformed it from a more barbarous one. We're once again in an age of relative peace and luxury, and there are those who think the old ways can be discarded simply because they are old or they get in the way of personal expression. They need to realize that tit may be because of those old ways that we have the true peace that they so cherish. It's easier to stay secure when one has strong walls built around him to keep out the things that will cause harm.  G.K. Chesterton put it well when he said only a fool would tear down a fence before he knows why it was put there to begin with.

We're tearing down the walls of the Christian worldview and I fear a few savage beasts have already slipped in. This is why I do apologetics. It's not for my sake, but for the sake of my granddaughter and the society in which she will live. As a precious human being born into this world, she deserves nothing less.

References

1 Schmidt, Alvin J. How Christianity Changed the World.
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004). 49.

2 Ibid. 56.

He Needs to Be Committed: Touré's Abortion Double-Speak

Last week we marked the 40th anniversary of the infamous Roe vs. Wade decision, a particularly bad bit of legalese that opened the door to more than 55 million babies being slaughtered in the U.S. to date. There were many articles commenting on the decision, from both pro-life and pro-choice camps. One that specifically caught my attention was from the MSNBC commentator Touré (nee Touré Neblett) who said in a video commentary that abortion had "saved my life."

Touré's monologue began:

"This week brought us the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and made me reflect on a moment from about fifteen years ago when I was in a committed relationship with a woman who I knew was just not the one.  She probably also knew it wasn't gonna work out… and then she got pregnant. And I was terrified. I've always known the importance of family and building kids into strong adults. And I know I would not be who I am if not growing up under the watchful eye of two people who loved me and loved each other.  I knew that pregnant woman and I were not gonna be able to form a lasting family. She decided it was best to have an abortion and days later she did; we did. And in some ways that choice saved my life. I was not yet smart enough or man enough to build a family or raise a child and I only would have contributed to making a mess of three lives."

Touré goes on to say how years later, after he married his current wife and they were expecting their first son, his belief in abortion was shaken by viewing 3-D ultrasounds.  "But in the end I remain committed to being pro-choice because I cannot image arguing against a woman's right to control her body and thus her life." He then dismisses babies in the womb by saying that "there is a reasonable and unsolvable medical debate about when exactly life begins."

Now, there is so much terrible thinking here that I could write a book about it, but if I were to be given the chance to talk with Touré, I think I would ask him two questions.  First, notice his opening sentence. He said, "I was in a committed relationship with a woman who I knew was just not the one." Hmm. What do you mean by "the one" Touré? The context seems to imply that you didn't truly love her (remember families are built by two people who love each other), or you at least didn't love her to commit to forsake all others for her. So, if that's the case, then tell me what exactly was it that you were committed to? How can one be in a "committed relationship" without committing to the person for life?  The only answer I can come up with is that he was committed to the sex. He states that "She probably also knew it wasn't gonna work out... and then she got pregnant." So, she got pregnant after they both knew it wasn't going to work out? Touré's understanding of commitment is about as fast and loose as one could have.

Secondly, Touré said that the experience of prenatal care and the technology of ultrasounds made him question his position on abortion. His only escape from the fact that medical science through ultrasound showed that there is a live human being in the womb was to assert that "there is a reasonable and unsolvable medical debate about when exactly life begins." Perhaps the debate is unsolvable medically (the question of the soul would be a metaphysical question and thus lie outside the purview of science), but my question would be so what? There is an equally unsolvable medical debate about when exactly life ends.  However, we don't throw up our hands and claim that we can never recognize a patient from a corpse.

No, Touré is doing a brilliant job of Orwellian double-speak here.  He wants to be committed when it's not a commitment and he claims that any small area of doubt is justification to deny the facts of science that are presented to him directly so he may hold onto his politically correct ideology. It is just this type of propaganda and self-denial that allows the slaughter of the innocents to continue. If Touré was truly held to "a woman's right to control her body and thus her life", he wouldn't stand for destroying both those bodies and those lives in utero, before they ever had a chance to grow and thrive.

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Why Do They Always Ask About Rape and Incest?

The media is in full bore assault on Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock  because he held that even in cases of rape, the life of the conceived child is worth protecting. While Mourdock offered his view freely during the debate, the question of  "do you support abortion even in cases of rape or incest" has been asked so frequently it would be expected to appear. In fact, when NPR reported on the pro-life plank of the Republican party, it led with the "no exceptions for rape and incest" line. Why when discussing abortion does the "rape and incest" question always come up, and always in a way that seems to connote that the pro-life candidate is somehow out of touch?

First, these cases (yes they do indeed occur) make up a such a small percentage of the total number of abortions performed they really aren't indicative of why abortions are performed.  One cannot weigh the exceptions to the rule in order to determine whether the law should apply at all.  Imagine if we began a discussion on laws regarding theft and people kept saying "but what about those who must steal food because they are starving?"  This exception doesn't change the fact that stealing is wrong.

One may claim that the abortion issue is different. "But this is so personal. The child will  be a constant reminder of the crime" they may say. This is true; but in no other case do we intentionally punish the child for the crime of the parent, even when the child's conception is a direct result of the crime. The Mary Kay Letourneau case is a prime example. Letourneau was a 35 year old middle school teacher in Washington who was convicted of raping her sixth grade student Vili Fualaau and subsequently conceiving. So, should the conceived child be eliminated since it is a direct product of Letourneau's criminal behavior?  Letourneau  repeated her crime and was in prison while carrying her second child from Fualaau. Should she have been  required to abort the baby for the victim's sake? Must Fualaau's parents be subjected to the repeated reminder of their young son being manipulated by an evil seductress who stole the innocence of a child?

Here's another scenario: imagine a woman was raped without her knowledge and conceives. Perhaps she's passed out on a bed after drinking too much at a party or she was slipped something like Rohypnol. She wakes up the next morning sore and disoriented but doesn't have any recollection of the actual intercourse, simply a lot of questions. She returns home and believes that she became pregnant with her husband. However upon birth, genetic testing reveals that the baby isn't his. She puts the pieces together and realizes that she had been raped. Can she now ask that the baby be destroyed?  She doesn't want a child that will remind her of that awful crime that happened to her. Is it OK to at that point kill the child?

I think those who discuss the problem of abortion with others should begin to push back on the rape and incest question before answering it. I would like to ask reporters if Letourneau should have been forced to abort while she was in prison. Why is it not OK to kill a newborn if we find out that the child was the product of rape after it was born? If the guiding principle is that the life of a baby is precious enough that we can handle the issue or remembrance in more humane ways (say adoption), then that should apply in all cases of rape and incest.  If not, then the pro-abortion proponents must show what distinctions there are between a baby who has just been born or a baby who will be.

The Shell Game on Stem Cells

One of the campaign pledges Barak Obama ran on was to reverse the Bush administration's ban of federal funding for new lines of embryonic stem cell research. Given Obama's now in office, some news publications are spinning the stem cell debate pretty strongly. Time magazine's cover story on stem cell research trumpets "How the Coming Revolution in Stem Cells Could Save your Life" while the article is filled with ridiculous statements like "during the dark days of the Bush administration's stem cell restrictions", "federally backed scientists like Melton were forced to adopt a byzantine system of labeling and cataloging their cell cultures and equipment". Even the article's subheading contains more commentary than fact when it states "After eight years of political ostracism, stem-cell scientists like Harvard's Douglas Melton are coming back into the light - and making discoveries that may soon bring lifesaving breakthroughs."

My question is - aren't we getting tired of being lied to yet? The hype in the Time article is ridiculous, meant only to sway people to a political point of view. Let's separate all this rhetoric from what we actually know.

1. There was no ban on stem cell research. Even though articles carried headlines of the "federal stem cell research ban", there was never a ban on this type of research. The Bush administration disallowed any federal funding for creating new lies of embryonic stem cells - in other words destroying more embryos just to get stem cells from them. Federal money was available to do research on existing lines of embryonic stem cells. And private investment in embryonic development was always allowable, but not as readily found for reasons we will see.
2. Embryos don't need to be destroyed for this research to continue. Just last year, UCLA scientists announced that they were able to create pluripotent stem cells - cells with all the same potential as embryonic cells - from human skin, thus confirming earlier successes by other scientists. Katherine Plath, one of the lead scientists on the project said "Our reprogrammed human skin cells were virtually indistinguishable from human embryonic stem cells." If this is true, then why are we so up in arms over the federal restrictions? Look what it helped accomplish - scientists looked for other ways to get to the same cell types without an ethical quandary and were successful. Everybody wins.
3. Embryonic stem cell research is not the only game in town. Over and over again, articles like the one in Time fail to differentiate the types of stem cell research that are being investigated. Embryonic stem cells, those which come from human embryos, are only one type of research being performed - and that type isn't even the most successful research happening. Adults create stem cells naturally as well and in this field of research we're seeing real advances all the time.

The latest example is how a stem cell treatment can reverse multiple sclerosis symptoms by using the patient's own stem cells. This is a major breakthrough and has no ethical problems whatsoever, yet articles like that in Time never differentiate the success and ethical issues dividing adult stem cells and Let me emphasis this point - there are no successful clinical trials of any treatment using embryonic stems cells anywhere in the world. None . According to the Susan Martinuk of the Calgary Herald, "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration just approved a clinical trial for an ESC treatment for spinal cord injuries, thereby making the U. S. the first in the world to conduct a human ESC clinical trial." She then goes on to offer a very candid assessment of the field:

But many private companies have been reluctant to fund embryo research because it involves morally controversial techniques and, so far, has shown few signs of success. Most preliminary research indicates that adult stem cells are the key to new cures and treatments, so they're jumping on that bandwagon. This is the real reason government funding is so essential to ESC research—few private investors view it as a future success.
...
In contrast, adult stem cells from bone marrow and stem cells obtained from umbilical cord blood are already curing diseases. While scientists are heralding the success of their FDA approval for the world's first clinical trial using ESCs, more than 1,000 clinical trials are underway or have been completed using ASCs. Dozens of cures have been seen in trials and the FDA has already approved ASC treatments for nine different conditions. Other ASC treatments have been approved for use in other countries, but are still in the process of gaining FDA approval.
Duke University is using umbilical cord blood to treat children with brain injuries and cerebral palsy. The Texas Heart Institute is treating patients with heart disease by injecting their own ASCs directly into the heart to stimulate healing and blood flow. Most recently, a woman's bone marrow cells were used to grow the new windpipe she so badly needed.

The first step to enlightenment isn't Barack Obama. It's acknowledging the only thing holding back embryonic stem cell research is that it might not work. In the Los Angeles Times, Susan Estrich claimed that those against destroying embryos for research purposes were playing "selfish politics mandated by those who don't give a damn". Really? Where's the track record here? Who's obfuscating the issues? Why don't private investors see the same rich potential in embryonic stem cells as adult cells? And if it's because they don't want to get caught in an ethical quandary, then why not advance the creation of pluripotent cells from human skin instead of embryos. It seems to me that Estrich and Time are the ones playing politics. If you're really worried about the kids, then follow success, not your agenda.

Image courtesy ZioDave - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ziodave/25510393. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0