Christian Worldview Concepts

Medical Practitioners

Voice in the Wilderness

There may be times when such voices seem obscurantic, obstructionist, and even lacking common sense. There may be times when the majority believes those with religious conviction are ill-informed. Perhaps the voices of dissidents will be irritating to the culture, but dismissing them out of hand because their arguments seem illogical or indefensible is to miss the importance of free speech in a free society, a principle that liberals are quick to seize when it is to their advantage.

Allowing the voice of opponents to be heard and taking some of their concerns seriously is a small price to pay if practices such as eugenics are to be part of our social policy. When that social policy involves the deliberate destruction of human life, even for presumably merciful reasons, it is necessary to place impediments against destroying human lives for reasons that have nothing to do with the best interests of the life being destroyed. It is easy to claim we are killing for merciful reasons when in fact our motives stem more from economic or other social concerns. Killing human beings, even those many do not consider full human beings, must remain a difficult thing to do. We do not want killing to become easy, to occur without serious reflection on what such a social policy says about our society. An argument can be made that there is already far too much killing in American society, too many acts of violence, and there can be no denial that abortion methods are violent. I believe a pluralistic society like ours cannot afford to silence the voice of those who would advise extreme caution before pursuing such a "solution" to the "problem" of genetically-defective preborn human beings. If we are to avoid repeating the mistakes of the Third Reich in its practice of eugenics, we can hardly afford to "demonize" those who take positions against abortion in even the most severe cases.