Tag: #abortion

A response to the deconstruction of the pro-life position

The following is a reply to an Op-Ed published on June 4, 2019 by Lagrange College Professor of Political Science John Tures.  His piece is available on-line here: https://www.valleytimes-news.com/2019/06/tures-how-pro-life-are-we-willing-to-be/

In his op-ed, “How pro-life are we willing to be?”, Professor Tures uses a deconstructionist strategy to argue that the “pro-life” position is inconsistent.  The employed method is nonempirical and therefore qualitative.  Such a technique is often used to interlock seemingly disparate groups under one governing principle or power that is often discriminatory.  I respectfully disagree with Tures’ argument as the issues and groups he mentioned nominally overlap in their particulars.  Important differences are passed over.

“Do Not Resuscitate” orders, withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, Euthanasia, the death penalty, and abortion have in common the loss of human life in the medical setting.  Medical ethics underpinning the first two practices center upon the patient consent necessary for all medical treatments.  Consent can be withheld and withdrawn.  Ventilators and resuscitation efforts are active medical interventions. In emergencies, consent is implied unless otherwise documented.  Death as an outcome is not changed.

The argument against medical euthanasia does not center as much upon a terminally ill person’s right of self-determination but upon the ethics of physicians actively assisting or facilitating their demise.  There is no historical support for such a practice in the Greco-Roman or Judeo-Christian traditions that formed Western society and law.  Quite the opposite is true. 

The intent is to actively take a life using medical means contrary to the Oath of Hippocrates and the time-honored medical maxim “primum non nocere” (first do no harm).  Unlike comfort or hospice care, where the intent is palliation, euthanasia does not have any objective medical goal as death is always a medical harm.

Physicians are not to participate in lethal injection but may decide as a juror to invoke the death penalty.  The latter is not a medical activity.  Unlike euthanasia, the death penalty is attested in the Western tradition and law.  Divine and human justice demand recompence for murder.  Grace and mercy permit us to lessen the penalty and even forgive.  Without justice, human life and peace would be untenable.

Abortion is the purposeful taking of a human life that, apart from danger to the life of the mother, is for material and utilitarian purposes.  To justify such a heinous act, pro-choice advocates have dehumanized a fetus as somehow not alive or worthy of protection.  The Nazi designation was “Lebensunwertes Leben” (life unworthy of life).  Traditional medical ethics protect the life of the unborn unless the mother is in harm’s way.  Life, not death, is the expected outcome of the pregnancy. 

The pro-life position cannot deconstruct in this manner.  It is quite consistent across these categories.  All human life is sacred but evil and sin abound in this world causing death and suffering.  It is for us to seek the center of God’s will found in His Law and in the Gospel for our Lord uses evil to make good. 

Response to Alabama State Representative John Rodgers (D)

On May 2, 2019 Alabama State House Representative gave a controversial floor speech opposing Alabama’s abortion bill. He said “So you kill them now or you kill them later. You bring them in the world unwanted, unloved, you send them to the electric chair. So, you kill them now or you kill them later.”  The following is a reply. https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/05/02/alabama-democrat-on-abortions-you-kill-them-now-or-you-kill-them-later-lc-bk-orig.cnn

And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born. Ezekiel 16:4–5 (ESV)

During a debate on the abortion bill, Alabama State Rep. John Rogers (D) said “Some kids are unwanted, so you kill them now or you kill them later. You bring them in the world unwanted, unloved, you send them to the electric chair. So, you kill them now or you kill them later.”

These crass comments received just condemnation from individuals across the political spectrum.  However, I believe many missed the depth of his depraved thinking and how it reflects a common worldview concerning humanity and God.

Rogers is vulgarly echoing a common argument used by those favoring abortion.  Unwanted children born into poverty with neglectful mothers will mostly live a life of poverty, depravity, crime and wind up in prison or even death row.  Presumably, abortion would spare the unwanted this horrible fate and relieve the burden on the community.

I hold that such an argument dehumanizes the unborn child by making him/her a victim of fate without responsibility for their own decisions.  It assumes the unwanted child cannot, despite poverty and rejection, overcome their circumstances and be a good productive citizen.  So bad is their fate that they are better off dead. 

The passage from Ezekiel teaches otherwise.  God is addressing Jerusalem, a city founded by the Amorites and Hittites whose heinous practices, including child sacrifice, drew God’s wrath.  Their punishment deserved nothing short of total destruction.  God raised Israel to conquer the land through Holy War and put all the inhabitants, their possessions and animals to the ban. 

The child, Jerusalem, had hopeless prospects and was rejected.  In the rhetorical metaphor, the child city was not afforded the usual customs of acceptance offered to legitimate and wanted children of the time.  When the child was prepared and placed in swaddling cloths, he was then handed to the father who would acknowledge and accept the child as his own to be raised in a loving family.  This child, Jerusalem, was left to die. That was its fate.

But this is not the end of the story.  In the next passage God finds the child city abandoned, filthy, bloody and dying.  God, through grace, restored life to Jerusalem, washed the child, anointed it with oil and “made you mine.” More so, God dressed the child in fine linen and adorned her with gold and so forth.  David would make her the capital, Solomon built the first temple and the city became a queen.

Through human failing and sin, the people of Israel would later reject God and the city was destroyed centuries later.  But the point here is that God is merciful, gracious, loving and kind.  He is the one who guides our steps and His providence directs the lives of individuals and nations.  Beauty comes from ashes.

John Rodgers, and those who make the socioeconomic argument favoring abortion, ignore the possibility that many of these unwanted children are responsible moral agents who, by the grace and favor of God, can be raised and made beautiful.  I know many such people.  To make them slaves of “fate,” determined by social and economic circumstances, dehumanizes them.  And when a person is dehumanized, their death becomes a cold utilitarian decision.  The moral imperative afforded other children does not apply to them. 

The Nazis called them “Untermenschen” (undermen, subhuman), and ““Lebensunwertes Leben” (life unworthy of life.”  They, along with the disabled and mentally ill (unnütze Esser – worthless eaters) were murdered.  Yet the Nazis murdered far less of them than the number of abortions performed in the USA since RvW.  We are up to about 60 million children murdered in the womb.  I have seen estimates that number the deaths under Hitler, Stalin and Mao at 63.5 million. 

This is the result of those, like Rep Rogers, who use Social Darwinism as the basis of their opinions and actions.  How dark and evil can man become?

But remember how the Biblical narrative continues.  In Luke 2:7 we read that Mary “gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger.”  Jesus, under the scandal of illegitimacy, was afforded the traditional loving care and in swaddling cloths was accepted by Joseph as his son.  His fate determined by his circumstances was to be raised in poverty, shame and shunned.  His prospects were not good (see Isaiah 52-53 – the 4th “servant song”) and in today’s way of thinking he would most likely become poor, a criminal or drug addict and possibly wind up in prison or death row.  Yet it is this Jesus, who took upon himself our sins and was punished unto death for us, is our savior.  He led a sinless life and we who believe are clothed by his righteousness. 

Let us praise our Lord, the God of life full of mercy and grace, whose love is boundless and who raises the lowly.  Let us pray to Him for forgiveness and plead for the unborn, lest their blood cry out from the ground.  Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have sinned worse than the Amorites and Hittites.