1903 The Depths To Which We Have Sunk
What are the most basic, most fundamental, most indisputable pillars of a moral life – not a life of liberty or prosperity or health or happiness, but one of moral integrity? What North Star does a culture navigate by in order that its corporate soul flourishes?
It is no secret, and world history verifies, that when men form their societies, the resulting cultures are capable of great darkness and great light, deep cruelty and heroic love, foolishness and profound depth. And, no matter what we would like to believe, one age of men rarely preserves more than a very few victories over past scourges.
The supremacy of human life is like that. The most important characteristic of a society, apart from its spiritual life, is what value it expects its members to express toward the existence of others; not toward their potential or perceived value, but their right to exist at all. There is nothing more basic than life.
That axiom has been under relentless attack. In 1972, Dr. Joseph Fletcher published a paper (Indicators of Humanhood: A Tentative Profile of Man”) which included this statement: “Any individual…who falls [in the Stanford-Binet test] below the 20 mark, [is] not a person”. The very next year, 1973, gave us Roe v. Wade.
Now, finally, the fruit of the war and the true intent of its soldiers is being both exposed and celebrated. Their hand was first forced in April of 2007 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortion. It took less than 24 hours for Democrats in Congress at the time to attempt a nullification of the decision through a pair of “Freedom of Choice” bills. Let that sink in; an effort to protect the practice of birthing a child except for its head and then murdering it.
In 2012, the unbelievable happened. Two Australian philosophers, A. Giubilini and F. Minerva, published a paper in defense of infanticide in The Journal of Medical Ethics (“After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?”). They refused to accept the terms infanticide or euthanasia and the reasoning was astounding. The crux of the argument was that a “fetus” or a new-born infant were not persons because they were unable to understand the value of their own existence or “have aims [for their own lives]”. The philosophers reached the inevitable conclusion – an infant can’t be harmed because it doesn’t exist; its not a person.
One would like to think that Giubilini and Minerva would be outliers, morbid purveyors of a radical theory. Not so. Theory exposed itself as reality at the end of January. First, Virginia state delegate Kathy Tran admitted that her “Repeal Act” would allow abortions up to and during delivery. A short time later, her governor, Ralph Northam, a pediatric doctor, in a radio interview, broadcast this explanation: “The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensure…”. The baby is born, now let’s think about letting it live.
Finally, now, in our lifetime, in the United States of America, abortion ideology and its consequences has become emboldened to be honest. Virginia is the tip of the iceberg. New York passed an effectively no-limits abortion bill in January. Vermont’s House passed a similar bill in February with Illinois, New Mexico and Rhode Island hot on their heels.
Most appalling of all, on February 25th, our U.S. Senate defeated, yes defeated, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Meditate on that. There were not 60 votes available to prevent infanticide. There were not 60 men and women willing to insure baseline routine emergency care for new-born infants because it might impede a presumed “right” to cause a human death.
Make no mistake, the depths to which we have sunk is about more than an idolatrous devotion to abortion. This is also about a fierce battle to protect the macabre inner sanctums of child sacrifice on the altar of “ME” and the normalization of the depravity of man.
Never again should anyone on the Left claim, as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has that they want to “…reclaim America’s decency, restore compassion to our leadership (@SenGilligrand).
This nation should be mourning. The last century has demonstrated all to painfully what happens when persons become disposable. Yet, in our own nation, that darkness is gaining legitimacy and power. But then what else is one to expect when powerful forces are able to convince desperate mothers that it is morally acceptable to kill their own being-born or just-delivered children.