Hi Friend,

Do you know what group was first targeted by Hitler for extermination?  It was the disabled.  Over 400,000 people with disabilities were sterilized then over 70,000 disabled people were killed in the gas chambers.

It may come as a shock that today we are following the same path by an orchestrated effort to kill children with Down syndrome.  It is impossible to know the exact number but doctors test for DS during pregnancy and some estimates are that 90 to 92 percent of parents in Europe and possibly as many in America opt to abort the child.

Evidence of how far we’ve come down an awful path was brought home when an Oregon court awarded a couple $3 million in what the court termed a “wrongful birth”.  Parents gave birth to a child with Down syndrome which had escaped detection so the parents sued the doctor.  The jury said the birth should not have occurred.

Maybe it’s the approach of Passover that causes me to sympathize with humans that are flawed.  What if God were as intolerant with us as we are of a defenseless infant who has never sinned?

But lest you think that Oregon’s law is an anomaly you should know that at least twenty-eight states now recognize some form of “wrongful birth” circumstance.

How can it be wrong to be born?  What crime did this child commit by striving to receive what we all want—life?  And if it were remotely possible that this child had sinned, what court is worthy to convict him?

All this is a far stretch from saying a mother has the right to do to her body what she wants.  In this case, the court is saying that a child had no right to be born. Therefore, it is justifiable to kill him AFTER he is delivered.

There is a growing expectation that parents have a right to perfect children.  When a child is discovered to have a defect, conventional wisdom says the parent can do away with them—like trash intended for the garbage can.  The decision of the courts is that parents at least should be compensated for the inconvenience of a life that should not exist.  Has our society come to believe that we should not be burdened with children that are less than ideal?

An article in The Journal of Medical Ethics advocated a fourth trimester abortion.  It’s a nice way of saying that parents have a right to end the life of a child after it is born if it is a burden to the family.

But this throws open the door to other issues.  If society has a right to a “fourth trimester abortion”, then why not the fifth, sixth, or even two hundredth?  Do parents have the right to end the life of their two-year-old?  Or should a family euthanize an elderly member whose medical bills will impede a child’s opportunity for a good college?  Can society afford to pay for the care of a patient in a mental hospital?  Should society tolerate a student who doesn’t score well on his SAT?   When the line is erased, where will the next line be drawn?  And who will draw it?   When God is eliminated, who takes His place?

The Journal of Medical Ethics goes on to say that the practice of ending the life of a child might even be acceptable in “cases where the newborn has the potential to have an acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.”

“AT RISK!”  What good thing has ever been accomplished without risk?

While the authors allow that both the unborn child and the newborn are “human beings”, they insist that neither has a right to life because they are “potential persons, not actual persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life,” they assert.

Arguments for infanticide are not new. In fact, the logic behind them has been embraced at the highest levels of government. As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama opposed legislation to define as “persons” babies who survive late-term abortions.

Obama said in a speech on the Illinois Senate floor that he could not accept that babies wholly emerged from their mother’s wombs are “persons”, and thus deserving of equal protection under the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.

Thankfully such people will never hold office in the Kingdom of God. One of the requirements for ruling in that Kingdom is believing in the commandment, Thou Shalt Not Murder.

Until next time,

Jim O’Brien