More about America’s descent into barbarism as indicated by recent legislation in New York state. (See Descent – Part A). Consider twenty questions:
1. How is it that an immigrant has the immediate and full protection of the US Constitution upon setting his/her foot on US soil when a child born in America does not have a single constitutional right?
2. If an unmarried teenage girl gives birth and tosses her baby into a dumpster, can she be tried for murder if the baby dies? Or any other crime whether the child lives or dies?
3. What happens to the medical personnel and/or institution which refuses to perform an abortion?
4. What will the response of our Catholic friends be? (My prediction: they will be stupefied or stupid. No criticism of Catholics, but historically they have been staunchly pro-life. My hope is that biblically-literate evangelicals—my crowd—will be stupefied into serious action.)
5. The fifth amendment of the US Constitution guarantees “due process of law” (against, among other things, deprivation of “loss of life or liberty”). Shall we revoke the amendment? (An amendment, by the way, which is the envy of the world and purchased with the blood of American patriots.)
6. Who will determine at which age the life of an abortion escapee must be protected under US Constitutional law?
7. Under NY law, if a normal child is born and the mother chooses not to let it live, how, precisely, will the life of the child be terminated? Is it given water? Food? An injection to make passage easier for the child? Gentle suffocation? Who, precisely, makes such a decision?
8. Does such legislation lead us to the persistently repeated promise of “few, safe, and legal” abortions?
9. Are we on the road to the time when the state, and not the mother, will be able to dictate which child may live and which may not?
10. Should American taxpayers continue to pay over 40% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion bill— over half a billion dollars a year—when most of us decry the act?
11. Why is there no provision in the bill against the widespread selling of fetal tissue/parts? Remember “I want a Lamborghini?” (To put it otherwise: if it is morally acceptable to make money by taking a baby’s life, why is it morally unacceptable to make money by selling parts of him?)
12. What effect will all this have on the life of the elderly who, like babies, are economically non-productive, thus expendable? If an infant’s personhood may be denied, why not that of the elderly?
13. A healthy baby is born; the mother doesn’t want him to live; the father does; does the father have legal grounds against the mother?
14. Why is there no feminist outcry about more female babies being aborted than males, as is the case?
15. How far are we from some government functionary telling us which babies may be allowed to live or not? (I am thinking here of babies who may be discovered, either in-utero or after birth, having some abnormality: mental, emotional, physical, societal, or imagined.)
16. Can any Democrat who is openly pro-life be elected to the presidency? To the Congress? Same, by the way, with pro-lifers!
17. Lincoln once said about the central moral issue of his day (as abortion is of ours), “As I would not be a slave, I would not hold a slave.” Does his unimpeachable logic hold in the current situation?
18. Jesus once said that we should do to others what we wish they would do to us. Does His unimpeachable logic hold in the current situation?
19. Do you, personally, ever wonder what the Creator thinks about this issue? (Yes, of course, you believe in Him! You know the eminent Russian philosopher, Nikolai Berdyaev, was right when he wrote, “If God does not exist, anything goes,” and you don’t want somebody shooting your kids at school today and giving in defense, before the jury, “I agree with Berdyaev; there is no God and therefore I cannot be held accountable.”)
20. When Mother Teresa was asked, in an American television interview, about the future of western civilization, she said that when a woman can kill the baby she’s carrying for no reason but a dislike for the inconvenience, “there is not much in western civilization worth saving.”
An Irishman, Jonathon Swift, who has the reputation of being the most gifted satirist in the English language, wrote, with withering wit, about how to solve the problem of unwanted babies being aborted in Ireland in his day (in 1729!). You will never forget his “A Modest Proposal,” which is horrific, but, says a biographer, “The proposal is no more shocking than the condition which calls it forth.” The essay sounds, well, very New Yorkish.