Articles of Conscience – The Sanctity of Life
By Steve Deace
The trial of baby butcher Kermit Gosnell has raised awareness of the sanctity of life, and ignited a renewed vigor among the pro-life community to act upon the courage of our convictions. Already there are stories of even more potential Gosnells out there—one in Houstonand perhaps another in my own backyard.
This has led to a renewed discussion within the pro-life movement about tactics and strategy. For example, Arizona Congressman Trent Franks, a previous guest on our nationally-syndicated radio show, is championing a bill that would ban killing children in Washington, D.C. after 20 weeks when accepted science states the unborn person feels pain. Another previous guest on our radio program, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, is a proponent of “personhood” legislation. Two of his fellow senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, are calling for national hearings on late-term abortions to prevent anymore Gosnells.
In light of these developments, and because of the many questions as a result of the expansion of our radio show into many new markets, I am compelled to provide my “articles of conscience” when it comes to the life issue to clarify any confusion and define why I believe what I believe.
What follows are my convictions and mine alone. Everyone else that works for our radio program or writes for our website is entitled to their own. I speak only for myself.
Source of Conviction
I believe the Bible is the literal Word of God and is the ultimate authority on matters of faith, truth, law, conscience, and morals. Please note I didn’t say it’s the only authority but the final authority. For example, I can’t learn how to perform open heart surgery from the Word of God. But I can learn when so-called “science” is really science, or just a scam to get me to buy into something my Creator, who loves me so much He spared not even His own life on my behalf, says is bad for me.
The Word of God clearly states that life begins at conception (Job 31:15, Isaiah 49:1, Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 139:13-6, Galatians 1:5) and unborn life is still life. For example, a pregnant Mary is told by Elizabeth the baby in her womb (John the Baptist) “leapt for joy” when Mary arrived with the baby Jesus in her womb (Luke 1:39-44). In the Mosaic Law there were penalties for even accidentally killing an unborn person (Exodus 21:22-25). In church tradition one of the oldest known summaries of teachings is called The Didache, and it includes the line“you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when they’re born.”
The Bible also teaches in many places the penalties for both the individual and the culture who corporately disregards the sanctity of life are potentially (and eternally) severe, which is another reason why I believe we should conform our laws to the “laws of nature and nature’s God” on this issue.
I also have a personal conviction on this issue. My mother was just 14-years old when she was pregnant with me, and a couple of months laterRoe v. Wade came along. She chose to have me when she was just 15. Several of those dearest to me in my family line were also conceived in circumstances when even many conservatives believe it is permissible to kill unborn persons as well. Each of those “exceptions” is a person with a name in my family.
Exceptions
There is no such thing as “pro-life with exceptions.” Anybody who claims such a mantle is not pro-life. “Pro-life with exceptions” is really just “pro-choice” with fewer choices. The Word of God provides no exceptions for needlessly and selfishly ending innocent life. Go home and tell your spouse just once you’re “pro marriage fidelity with exceptions.” It’s doubtful he/she will support your position, even if your exceptions represent just 1% of the time.
God-Given Right to Life
Now that it’s been established when life begins, that person is entitled to protection by law under our form of government. The founding document and organic law of these United States, The Declaration of Independence, says there is a God, our rights come from Him, and the only purpose of government is to defend those God-given rights—of which life is explicitly stated. The 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the Bill of Rights also states that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”
Therefore, I believe the first and primary responsibility of government at all levels is to protect the right to life, without which a person has no access to any of his/her other God-given rights that require them to be alive to access. Any politician or government entity that doesn’t defend innocent life at all stages is guilty of violating their oaths of office, not to mention sinning against God.
Public Funding
Given all the information provided up until this point, there is no doubt that voting for or supporting the public (taxpayer) funding of any entity that supports or explicitly takes part in the shedding of innocent blood is both immoral and unconstitutional.
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade is not “the law of the land” because it can’t possibly be.
First of all, it violates the “laws of nature and nature’s God” by permitting something God does not—the shedding of innocent blood. As Augustine, Aquinas, Blackstone, and Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote inLetter from a Birmingham Jail, any man-made code that doesn’t reconcile with the law of Almighty God is no law at all, and men and women of conscience have an obligation to disregard it or practice civil disobedience against it. A culture that disregards these natural laws faces natural consequences. For example, who knows if one of the 56 million unborn persons killed might have discovered the cure for cancer, been there to prevent a tragedy, or contributed positively to society in some way significant? Not to mention what the devaluing of human life does to a culture at-large. A culture that no longer protects life also won’t protect property, production, and prosperity, as we are seeing now.
Secondly, it’s clearly in violation of the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as the 14th Amendment which also says no “person” shall be denied “equal protection under the law.”
Thirdly, nowhere in our system of government is it afforded for judges to make the law. Federalist 78, written by Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, explicitly clarifies that an independent judiciary does not mean judicial oligarchy, judicial supremacy, or that judges are above the will of the people. There is an argument to be made (which I don’t agree with) that our Constitution implies so-called “judicial review” prior to Marbury v. Madison, but judicial review is not judicial activism where judges literally legislate from the bench. Nor is it judicial overview, where unelected judges and not “we the people” become the final word on what the Constitution means or says. Our founders clearly intended for checks and balances, separation of powers, and for the ultimate power to reside with the people in a “government by the consent of the governed.”
That being said, we cannot ignore the fact that for a generation the pro-life community has aided and abetted the codifying of a “common law intention” (by habit and repute) to treat Roe v. Wade as the law by regulating it as such. Therefore, I don’t believe it’s as simple as pretending Roe v. Wade doesn’t exist as a means of ending child killing in America, which leads us to our next point.
Incrementalism/Regulation
I believe some types of incremental steps to end child killing in America are good, some are well-intentioned but won’t accomplish what they hope to, and some are fraudulent.
Good incrementalism—I believe legislation that is compliant with the “laws of nature and nature’s God” in clearly asserting the right to life, but is intended to stop a new or eliminate a previously accepted procedure for shedding innocent blood is good incrementalism. For example, wanting to shut down new innovations into killing children like “telemed abortions,” or stopping someone like a Gosnell from continuing to operate a baby butcher factory in your community, is good incrementalism. It is good because it asserts the sanctity of life, is compliant with the Constitution, and therefore will actually advance the cause of life by proving to end a mechanism used to take life. Incrementalism is moving steadily, if slower than you would like, towards the right goal. Moving towards the wrong goal but slower by accepting the premise of your opponent’s argument isn’t incrementalism. That is defeatism.
Well-intentioned but likely unsuccessful incrementalism—Former California Congressman Bob Dornan once famously stated “any bill that ends with the phrase ‘and then you can kill the baby’ really isn’t a pro-life bill.” The truth of the matter is even Dr. James Dobson admitted the “partial birth abortion ban” signed into law by President George W. Bush didn’t save any babies. Butchers like Gosnell violated several laws banning abortions after a specified time when the baby feels pain or has a heartbeat to satisfy their blood lust.
The reason why these well-intentioned attempts at incrementalism often fail is because they attack the practice of child killing and not thepremise of child killing.
Lila Rose and Live Action have shown us on tape many times over the years that those whose conscience have no problem with making money off the killing of children lie, and do so regularly and shamelessly. Since we don’t have a regulatory agency that monitors pre-natal activity, we are often leaving it up to the very people killing children to report when a heart-beat is detected, or how far along the pregnancy is. That’s like asking the rooster to guard the hen house, or Eric Holder to investigate the IRS. Newsflash: those who kill children also lie, as the Gosnell case proves.
Furthermore, such as in the case of the partial-birth abortion ban, they only ban a method of killing children but not the mechanism for killing them. In Gonzales v. Carhart, for example, partial-birth abortion wasn’t actually banned but rather just one particular method of conducting them. In its ruling the U.S. Supreme Court actually provides a “how-to” guide for the child killing industry by providing alternative means. It’s analogous to banning only one type of gas the Nazis used at their Concentration Camps to exterminate people, rather than banning the entire gas chamber itself.
At best these well-intentioned but largely unsuccessful means of ending the plague of child killing only serve to raise awareness of the issue itself, which of course there is value to. And I’m sure these tactics have saved some babies, and anything done to preserve innocent life that doesn’t violate the natural law itself has merit. On the other hand, a generation of this tactic has also proven it gets us no closer to ultimately ending infanticide then we were the day after Roe v. Wadehappened. It is merely a stop-gap measure, but not a strategy for ultimate victory.
Fraudulent Incrementalism—These are attempts to compromise on the life issue to find bills that will “get Democrat votes” or “will pass judicial review” by disregarding the moral principle at stake. In other words, this is just cynical realpolitik at its worst where innocent children are treated as political footballs, not lives we have an obligation to protect. That’s because in order to get those profiting off of and/or protecting the child killing industry to sign on in the first place, these bills require the premise of the right to life argument to be sacrificed at the altar of political expedience.
These types of efforts argue the quality of life and not the sanctity of life, which means they’re actually arguing the child killing industry’s main point for them. For the child killing industry bases all of its arguments for killing children on the quality of life (i.e. is the child wanted, will it traumatize the mother to have the child, will the child be born with a disability or abnormality, will it be orphaned or destitute, etc.). Those are pagan utilitarian arguments, and that’s the same argument fraudulent incrementalism perpetuates in the name of pragmatism (which is just another name for utilitarianism).
The idea of looking for pro-life bills those who show no regard for life will sign onto is analogous to the early church altering the Gospel so that it didn’t offend a Caesar who thought he was god. You do not want to appease the enemies of your cause, you either want to convert them or defeat them.
Victory
I believe the only strategy for victory in the cause for life is to define a person as a person at the moment of biological beginning—or the movement known today as “personhood.”
In the Roe v. Wade hearing itself, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that if it could ever be determined that unborn children were indeed a person it would render the entire abortion industry null and void. Keep in mind much of the pre-natal technology we take for granted today that provides such a vivid view of life in the womb was in its nascent stages in 1973. We now know when life begins, and when it has its own distinct DNA and heartbeat. We know that what we’re looking at on that sonogram is a child. We are without excuse.
Defining personhood puts the argument where it belongs—is that a life and when does life begin? Instead of arguing emotion, moral relativism (i.e. it’s only a life in certain circumstances such as if the child is wanted), or all the other red herrings the child killing industry perpetuates to justify its carnage, we are arguing the foundational questions of existence itself. There’s a reason the child killing industry does not want to debate these questions, because these questions put them on the defensive and define them for what they really are—child killers.
I simply see no way to win this argument without begging the question of what is a person and when is it a person, because without those questions history has already shown there aren’t any other persuasive arguments that changes hearts.
We will not be able to incrementally regulate child killing out of existence anymore than we could regulate slavery out of existence. That was originally tried as well, and then ultimately became what we now know as the abolitionist movement. The focus switched from regulating slavery to abolishing it, which they ultimately did. I believe we should follow the William Lloyd Garrison model.
Therefore, we should seek to abolish the shedding of innocent blood, not regulate it or make it more sanitary. Every sincere pro-lifer I know agrees, and the only workable strategy I know of that can actually make that happen is establishing the personhood of every American at biological beginning.
(You can friend “Steve Deace” on Facebook or follow him on Twitter @SteveDeaceShow)
No comments:
Post a Comment