Abortion A Manifestation Of A Culture Of Self

There is a particularly significant new development on the health care front, but we should consider where we are in light of passing the 38th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade and the case in Philadelphia of the doctor taken in amid the grisly physical evidence of his performing many late-term “illegal” abortions in a gruesome clinic. First, you’ll notice my enclosing “illegal” in quotation marks. Isn’t that remarkable? There are illegal and legal ways to kill unborn children. We are more likely to call it “illegal” when we have an emotional reaction that it’s yucky. It’s like you’d make a lot of news if you took your 3 year-old into the basement and sawed its limbs off, and stuffed the trunk in a closet. Please! Can’t you just take it somewhere out of sight and put a nice clean bullet through its head, so we don’t have to hear about it? I mean, let’s have some decency, huh? This particular doctor was doing the live delivery and puncturing the skull of babies at the 6,7,8th month of gestation, severing their spine with scissors and preserving refrigerated remains. I mean, that’s just gross, right? And, he wasn’t even an OBGyn! The nerve! I mean, we do have our standards for killers, you know! One woman actually died after overdosing on anesthetics.

Predictably with the advance of technology in imaging and neo-natal care of earlier births, public opinion has shifted in the pro-life direction in recent years. But consider the logic of the “pro-choice” position that has prevailed in the USA since the contrived Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision 38 years ago in 1973. It has always been plain that birth was a very arbitrary point at which to assign sanctity to human life, since involuntary and induced births occur at different points of gestation. But once it is accepted that a class of human life is not a sacred person, it should clarify the question: just what exactly is sacred about ANY human life? And in fact, smart academics in our vaunted (why is a very good question to me) Ivy League universities have actually proposed that life be made disposable for a time AFTER birth: that a grace period should be given to determine if the child should live. Is this a keeper or a lemon? The important point to me is that this is entirely consistent with the initial denial of sanctity of a human life, only moving the decision period.

Cultural conservatives have often spoken of a “culture of death.” But death is not the objective. It’s the consequence of a “culture of SELF.” At the bottom of this is that a selfish irresponsibility sits at the disposition that human life, even that of our own offspring, is a matter of convenience. This baby doesn’t fit with my plans or my preference at this time. Both here and in Europe which has also long practiced casual sex and open abortion, we are now in an economic crisis; finally at the end of our fiscal rope. My strong belief is that that is no accident. It is the same selfish and irresponsible spirit. I think such a consequence could have been predicted for a people who so long ago amputated the natural instinct to prize and care for its children in the womb, or at least countenanced such and its consequence of death. And if they face bankruptcy and some deprivation of what they have come to expect, will that possibly bring a general cultural repentance? Or might there be great further calamity to come?

I do grant that the regulation of abortion could not be effectively conducted by the federal government. I support the overturn of Roe v. Wade; a terrible decision in terms of both decency and legal reasoning. But I don’t advocate for an amendment to the US Constitution. If I were president and one came about, I would favor it. But in fact, if there ever were the public will required for an amendment, the cultural consensus would have already been won. And, I don’t think the federal government should try to enforce an abortion ban on, for instance, an intensely “pro-choice” state like California. Notice that California and other very “pro-choice” states are the nearest to bankruptcy among us? Again; no accident. Let them continue to wallow in their social squalor and face what consequences may come. And, let other places decide that they are not going to live that way and raise children in such a place. “We just don’t do that here.”

I’d be all for a Congress that would declare that “pro-choice” places are operating in defiance of American principle. They are. We all are, right now. But I would not be for a futile attempt by the federal government to force compliance. The impulse to force and control and impose on liberty is a liberal one. Let them be and suffer what they are. God can handle the unjustly killed. In history He always has. But, the society that behaves that way is in an unstable state. Let them have it their way. But I wish they would leave the rest of us out of it.