Value of human life

The Peachtree City Police Department announced last week that officers had arrested a man in his 40s for allegedly, among other charges, attempting to meet a girl he believed to be 13 years old, for immoral purposes. It was the 14th such arrest by the department in 18 months.

The officer who prowls the Internet for such men said that, if she could devote her entire time at work to this kind of investigation, she could arrest one predator a day, 365 days of the year. One source says that 1 in 5 children have been sexually solicited online. And, also this week, the news has carried stories of brutalized and murdered children in various parts of the nation.

I frankly don’t know why we are either shocked or surprised. When we devalue one aspect of human life, we demean all of life. Thirty-three years ago this week, the devaluing of human life became the law of the land. Since that time, the time of the “baby boomers,” my generation, Americans have killed nearly 50 million of the most innocent among them. That’s around 1.5 million a year — 4,400 every day. Over 3,000 perished on 9/11, yet that figure pales in comparison to the holocaust occurring on a daily basis in America.

The Church has never been confused about the issue of abortion. In the 2nd Century Letter to Diognetus, describing Christians, the writer states, “They marry, as do all others; the beget children, but they do not destroy their offspring (literally: ‘cast away fetuses’).” The Didache (1st century) instructed, “You shall not slay the child by abortions.” Tertullian declared, “The life in the womb may not be destroyed.” Tertullian also taught, “... life begins at conception.” It is only the modern Church, so-called, that has departed both from Scripture and from the Tradition of the Church.

If a society can manage to dehumanize a group of people, it makes it much easier to both control and destroy them. In the early part of America, Black people were called “property.” In Germany in the 1930s and ‘40s, Jewish persons were referred to as “vermin.” In our day, society refers to the unborn person as anything other than a “person.” A black man could be bought, sold, beaten, abused, and lynched because he was just “property.” A black woman, or a black child for that matter, could be abused, sexually or otherwise violated because she was merely “property.” Jewish men, women, and children could be starved, shot, and gassed because they were “vermin.” Children in America can be poisoned, dismembered, and have their brains sucked out of their skulls in the womb all because they are not “persons.” And all of this — the treatment of blacks, Jews, and children — was all “legal.”

In 1857, in the famous “Dred Scott Decision,” by a 7-2 vote of the United States Supreme Court, blacks were declared to not be persons. They were the property of their owners who could keep, sell, or kill them. Supporters of the decision told the anti-slavery crowd that they should shut up and not try to force their morality on others. The Court had spoken and the law was the law! In 1973, by a 7-2 vote of the United States Supreme Court, unborn children were effectively declared to not be persons. They were the property of their mothers who could either keep or kill them. Supporters of the decision told the anti-abortion crowd that they should shut up and not try to force their morality on others. The Court had spoken and the law was the law!

But the Dred Scott decision, as history has shown, was immoral. The Supreme Court was wrong. Legal or not, the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision of the Supreme Court is immoral. History will show that, in 1973, the Supreme Court was wrong. It is not a matter of if Roe will be overturned. It is a matter of when.

For those Christians who are confused by the secularized voices inside and outside the Church, one should note that God is not confused on the matter either. Jeremiah 1:4-5 (NIV) states, “Now the Word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I started to put you together in your mother, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart as holy. I chose you to speak to the nations for Me.’” Isaiah 44:2 teaches that, “the LORD ... made thee, and formed thee from the womb” (KJV). And, in the New Testament, it is recorded that an angel foretold that John the Baptist “will be great in the sight of the Lord; and he will ... be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother's womb.” (Luke 1:15 NASB)

Today, another 4,400 of America’s children died without ever having been allowed to see the faces of the mothers and fathers who should have nurtured and protected them. I am convinced that, once society declares that some people are “not human,” all of society is desecrated and demeaned. There are those, of course, who see no correlation between the slaughter of 50 million innocents and the rise of child porn, molestation, abuse, neglect, violence, and murder. Jeremiah may have seen our day and our nation when he said, “Let us lie down in our shame, and let our humiliation cover us; for we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day. And we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God" (Jeremiah 3:25-26 NASB).