Arguing Against Themselves at Both Ends of Life
19 Jan 2006
I’m confused; this past Tuesday the Supreme Court ruled that when it comes to physician-assisted suicide, states have the right to regulate the practice of medicine and the licensing of doctors. States can permit doctors to help terminally ill patients commit suicide by prescribing for them lethal doses of medication. Yet, this same Supreme Court denies states the right to regulate medicine and the licensing of doctors when it comes to abortion. Although states can permit doctors to end the lives of the terminally ill, they cannot prevent doctors from taking the lives of the unborn. Why are States’ rights only recognized by the Supreme Court in cases involving the termination of life, but never in cases involving the preservation of life?
When it comes to abortion, we are told by the pro-death crowd that life is shrouded in such mystery that no one knows when it really begins. Thus, all criminality is removed from the taking of an unborn child’s life because of our uncertainty over life’s inception. Yet, when it comes to euthanasia, this same crowd strips away the shroud and sees no mystery to life at all. According to them, life undoubtedly ceases prior to one’s becoming old and infirm; thus, the unconscionable extermination of the old and infirm is a merciful act of a compassionate society. How, one wonders, does the pro-death crowd get away with arguing against itself at both ends of life? At one end it cloaks life in mystery in order to hide the crime of abortion; at the other end it strips the cloak away in order to convince us of the compassion of euthanasia?
When James and John requested permission from Jesus to command fire down from heaven to consume a village of Christ-rejecting Samaritans, our Lord rebuked His hot-tempered disciples by warning them: “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9:51-56). Perhaps, there is no better indicator of the spirit that has seized our nation than the current culture of death being advocated by our society and adjudicated by our Supreme Court. It is not the Holy Spirit, but the most unholy of spirits, that inspires a culture of death. Whereas Christ came so that men may live, the devil, who has been “a murderer from the beginning,” always comes to “kill and destroy” (John 8:44; 10:10).
Don Walton
|
