Which Way America?
The father carefully inspects his new born son. Immediately he notices a birth defect, a malformed leg, perhaps. After some reflection, he hands the child to a servant, who takes it out of the room. Everyone knows that the child will not be seen again. It has been judged imperfect and unworthy of life.
In what country, in what age, in what culture, could such a thing take place? Where does it happen that the imperfect, the unfit, the unwanted infants are sent to die? Such a scene was common in ancient Rome. There, a child was inspected at birth by his or her father, who had the right by Roman law to put to death any member of his household -- wife, children, or slaves. Newborn babies whom the father judged to be unfit would be left on a hillside to die of exposure, if not eaten alive first by the packs of wild dogs that roamed the countryside.
But I will argue today that there is another country, age, and culture, in which infanticide may come to be practiced, and with the blessing of law: our own country, the United States of America. That may sound extreme, but I think I can make the case that the legal, intellectual, and cultural framework has begun to fall into place. We are but a short step away.
First, the legal framework is already in place. This is the easiest part of my argument to prove, and by reference to a simple fact: infanticide is already happening in America, and it is not being punished in our legal system.
During the last several months, the United States House of Representatives has held hearings and a vote on a proposed law called the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. This legislation has been introduced to extend legal protection to babies who by chance have survived abortions. Congressional testimony was given by a nurse, Jill L. Stanek, who works at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois. Here is what she said:
The method of abortion that Christ Hospital uses is called "induced labor abortion," also now known as "live birth abortion." This type of abortion can be performed different ways, but the goal always is to cause a pregnant woman's cervix to open so that she will deliver a premature baby who dies during the birth process or soon afterward.
It is not uncommon for one of these live aborted babies to linger for an hour or two or even longer. One of them once lived for almost eight hours.
Nurse Stanek went on to give this example of one such "live birth abortion"
I was recently told about a situation by a nurse who… had a patient who was 23+ weeks pregnant, and it did not look as if her baby would be able to continue to live inside of her. The baby was healthy and had up to a 39% chance of survival, according to national statistics. But the patient chose to abort. The baby was born alive. If the mother had wanted everything done for her baby, there would have been a neonatologist, pediatric resident, neonatal nurse, and respiratory therapist present for the delivery, and the baby would have been taken to our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for specialized care.
Instead, the only personnel present for this delivery were an obstetrical resident and my co-worker. After delivery the baby, who showed early signs of thriving, was merely wrapped in a blanket and kept in the Labor & Delivery Department until she died 2-1/2 hours later.
One might hope that if the Born Alive Infants Protection Act passes, the problem will be adverted. However, one cannot be sure. Partial Birth abortion has been around for about eight years now. It is, in reality, infanticide, and all the legislative efforts to stop it have failed. Further, in the Supreme Court's decision Stenberg v. Carhart, which stuck down Nebraska's ban on partial birth abortions, the justices put in place a legal principle that may also justify these "live birth abortions." They stated that a law regulating abortion must protect the health of the woman, and therefore the doctor may use whatever method of abortion he deems best for her health. I would be easy to argue then that because "live birth abortion," does not involve the use of surgical instruments, it poses less of a risk to a woman's health, and hence must be allowed.
But the legal framework is only part of the picture. Infanticide will not be legal, so long as people continue to think that it is immoral and unjust. But even that may soon change. At the same congressional hearings at which nurse Jill Stanek testified about live birth abortion, Dr. Robert P. George from Princeton University testified that influential scholars at major universities are changing the way people (especially the next generation) think about infanticide. For example, Professor Peter Singer at Princeton in a 1995 article entitled, "Killing Babies Isn't Always Wrong," proposed (as Dr. George summarized) that "like the ancient Greeks, we should have a ceremony a month after birth, at which the infant is admitted to the community. Before that time, infants would not be recognized as having the same right to life as older people." Or, to take another example, at American University in Washington D.C., professor Jeffrey Reiman, stated that infants do not "possess in their own right a property that makes it wrong to kill them," and that "there will be permissible exceptions to the rule against killing infants that will not apply to the rule against killing adults and children."
Do not suppose that these professors are without an audience or without influence. Have you ever heard the term "animal rights" or about the "animals rights movement"? If so, it is because of Dr. Peter Singer, the first of the scholars I just mentioned. Dr. Singer made his fame as the founder of the animal rights movement and has popularized the idea that people have no greater worth than animals. They are simply more complex kinds of animals, and should have no special rights that other animals do not. Dr. Singer has been quite successful in spreading this idea. Last summer, for example, I often had lunch with my fellow students at City University of New York, and some of them were the brightest people I have ever met. For many of them, the idea that animals and people should have equal rights, and that "species-ism" is a form of injustice, was not merely an acceptable idea. It was common sense. Dr. Singer has had his influence. And I think it is reasonable to be concerned that the man who made "animal rights" a household word is now trying to bring us infanticide too.
But even if the idea that infanticide can be right is getting a hearing, is our culture, is America ready to accept it?
Personally, I am afraid so. When abortion was first legal, most people still saw it as a horrific violation of human rights. But with the passage of time, with 1.3 - 1.5 million abortions each year, with so many more millions participating in the process of abortion at some level, a wall of denial around abortion has slowly built up, making it acceptable, and making worse violations of human rights possible.
Think back, for example, to 1970. Generally at that time, people were horrified at the idea of abortion. That year, New York Senate Majority leader Earl W. Brydges of Niagara Falls allowed a bill to come to a vote in the Senate that would remove all restrictions on abortion. Brydges was pro-life. Why did he let the bill come to a vote? Because he was so sure it would be defeated, and the issue could then be put aside. Cardinal Cooke at the time did nothing to oppose the bill. Why? Again, because he felt that it could not possibly pass. But it did pass. It barely got through the New York State Assembly by a vote of 76-73, and then passed a final vote in the Senate, 31-26. When that happened, Earl Brydges himself sat in his chair in the senate chamber and wept. And people were shocked.
Shock and outrage continued with the infamous Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, when abortion on demand became legal across the United States. But after that, the shock wore off, and though many were motivated to change the law, many also took advantage of the law. The wall of denial about what abortion really was and whom it hurt, began to grow.
At times some of the horrors of abortion became public knowledge. Women were found to be receiving sub-standard medical care in abortion clinics. But apart from the very worst cases, little was done. Women were beginning to show symptoms of depression and substance abuse, eight to ten years after an abortion, what is called "post abortion trauma". The psychological community did not take this seriously as a side effect of abortion. Then in the mid eighties, Dr. Bernard Nathanson made a film using ultrasound, showing an actual abortion taking place, The Silent Scream. Many people were horrified at first, but eventually, the film was ignored. The wall of denial grew higher. Then around 1993, Dr. Martin Haskell developed the procedure called partial birth abortion. This grisly procedure performed on children at approximately 20-24 weeks gestation has provoked great and lasting outrage. But note this too -- after seven years, and the efforts of legislators in the United States Congress and thirty states, partial birth abortion is still legal. Congress has not been able to override President Clinton's veto, and states' laws have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The wall of denial is now so high, that even with so clear and obvious an offense against human life as partial birth abortion, respect for life has not been able to break though.
Some say that there is nothing new in the controversy over abortion, that all the arguments have been made, and remade. I beg to differ. With the Stenberg v. Carhart decision of last June, the landscape has shifted radically, and we have come to a crossroads. Either people will wake up and work to extend legal protection to the unborn, or America will have infanticide under the name of "live birth abortion." Instead of inspecting the child for defects at birth, we will do genetic testing before birth, to see if the child meets our standards. Instead of leaving the child on a hillside to die, we will leave it -- better said, we are leaving it -- on a shelf in a hospital to die, perhaps feet away from the technology that could save its life.
In ancient Rome, even though children deemed unfit were left outdoors to die, some survived. The reason was that the Christians would go through the streets and countryside looking for them, trying to rescue them. They did this in violation of Roman law, and hence at risk of arrest and punishment. These Christians did not have the power to change the Roman empire, or Roman law, but they did what they could. The gospel message and Jesus' law of love instilled within them a reverence for life, and so they made great sacrifices and took great risks. We may feel that in our country the culture of death is so strong, and the wall of denial so solid, there is little we can do. But like the early Christians, let us at least do what we can, by educating others about respect for life, by reaching out in love to women in problem pregnancies, by proclaiming Jesus' mercy and forgiveness to women who have had abortions, and by making pro-life issues our highest priority when we vote in November.
This item 3163 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
