A few weeks ago, I watched with sadness as the governor of Massachusetts, along with other men and women, celebrated with cheers and applause a new law signed into existence. This law permits abortions up until the day of the baby’s birth. The previous state law allowed abortions for up to 24 weeks, but many wanted more freedom to end the life of their child. Interestingly, the doublespeak bill is titled, “Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act.” No mention of the unborn baby’s care.
I understand that late-term abortions are rare, but in the earlier days of abortion, we were told they would all be rare, legal and safe. I suggest that because there have been 63 million abortions in the United States in the last 53 years – they have not been rare.
Thirty years ago, a single daughter of our friends became pregnant. She gave birth to a baby boy diagnosed with hydranencephaly – the brain had started to form but then stopped. He had only a brain stem surrounded by fluid. The family loved that little boy until he died 12 days after he was born. The family trusted their baby with the Lord’s timing.
Today, if that baby was diagnosed in utero, doctors would typically recommend abortion. Why not allow the baby to be born and allow the family to grieve and say “good-bye” and love that little boy for 12 days?
I remember reading an article ten years after the Supreme Court declared that all women were now endowed with the right to terminate their pregnancies. Way back in 1984 Francis Schaeffer stated that abortion is a Slippery Slope in the dignity of mankind because when babies in utero are no longer valuable, the elderly will also be seen as an unnecessary burden to bear. At the time I didn’t understand what a Slippery Slope would entail.
That Slippery Slope was actually endorsed over one hundred years ago by the founder of Planned Parenthood – Margaret Sanger. Here are two of her most infamous quotes:
“These two words (birth control) sum up our whole philosophy. It means the release and cultivation of the better elements in our society and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction of the defective stocks – those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American Civilization.” (1923)
~and~
“We don’t want word to get out that we want to exterminate the entire Negro population.” (1939)
Today, physician-assisted suicide is increasingly promoted as an option for terminally ill patients – for those who are aging, or simply emotionally distressed. It has been legal in The Netherlands since 2002 and is presented as a practical option.
Are abortion and euthanasia becoming ways for us to escape pain, weakness and inconvenience? Are we looking for an easier life so as not to be confronted with our own lack of power? Or are we afraid of facing hard things and desperately trying to take control over our lives and others’ by inserting ourselves into God’s place?
Today, many people are making the choice of death for the people they choose. Yes, some terminally ill people have chosen this option for themselves. But have we considered the fact that someday a certain people-group near me might decide whether I live or die because of my beliefs, heritage or age?
We all remember what Hitler and his followers did during WWII – they ranked human groups into a hierarchy, declaring that the Germans and other Nordic peoples were the superior master race. Anyone outside this group were deemed subhuman – specifically the Jews, gypsies, political dissidents and others -so they needed to be exterminated, and they successfully killed almost 6 million.
In the 1990s, the Hutus in Rwanda systematically dehumanized fellow Rwandans from the Tutsi ethnic group, calling them “no better than cockroaches,” and slaughtered nearly one million Tutsis over four years.
We make a grave mistake when we ourselves live as if we are “God” and decide which humans live and which humans die. Whenever we keep God out of the equation of life and put ourselves in His place, we redefine who is valuable and who is not. We become the judge who makes the decision of who will be allowed to live or die. Today it may be just the unborn, elderly and the terminally ill, tomorrow someone may decide you or me to be no better than a cockroach and we will need to be exterminated…
The God of the Bible created humans in His image and in the book of Genesis we were given the command to be fruitful and fill the earth. He crowned humans with glory so we can imitate Him in creating and tending and loving the world around us. But it’s not only the Bible which tell us we are valuable, even our Declaration of Independence states:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights …Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
When people disregard our Creator God and deny He exists, they essentially become their own god. And when human beings put themselves in the place of God, the weak and the handicapped will bear the brunt of those decisions about who has the right to breathe air on this planet and who does not.
“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
G.K. Chesterton
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