Judie Brown
Socially polite child abuse
By Judie Brown
Most people will decry the abuse of a child and say that it's one of the worst things a person could do to another. So why aren't these same people crying for the protection of preborn babies – babies who suffer the worst child abuse of all? Thousands of babies are killed every day in America, yet very few condemn this or try to stop it. And the sad fact is that this terrible trend may only get worse unless we can change minds and hearts.
Most Americans do not think of abortion as child abuse. But as Mother Teresa once said, "Any country that accepts abortion is . . . teaching its people . . . to use any violence to get what they want."
I would add that not only does abortion teach people the palatability of violence, it persuades people to lie to themselves. Self-deception has been gripping our land for many years.
The results of this charade are nearly unfathomable when one contemplates the actual number of children who have died over the past forty-plus years. And the manner in which they die is even more disturbing. Or is it?
Current headlines lead us to believe that perhaps the sort of child abuse that occurs prior to birth, rendering the victim dead, is not considered to be a form of violence, and is rather defined as advances in medicine. Take for example the activities of the Shenzhen company in China. The firm has announced it is getting closer to allowing parents to pick the embryo of their choice that is deemed most likely to succeed in life. The firm "is mapping the genes of people who are gifted in maths in a bid to isolate the genes that make them smarter than the average person."
The scientific journal Nature confirms this practice and its popularity saying, "As genetics allows us to turn the tide on human disease, it's also granting the power to engineer desirable traits into humans."
Genetic engineering is setting the stage for a type of super baby. As one report suggests, modifying embryos will become the wave of the future, giving would-be parents the opportunity to select a child in the same way one might choose a piece of fruit from the grocery shelf.
Many babies will die during the course of this embryo design and selection process, each of them rejected due to imperfections. While these embryonic babies may not be viewed as members of the human race by many, if not most, Americans, that does not change the facts.
Mark Oshinskie sees this, and writes, "Following the devaluation of babies in the developed world in the 1970s and 80s, babies became scarce and, consequently, desirable once again. Now, any means used to make babies is seen as good, as long as pregnancy occurs at a convenient time."
Exactly! As long as the convenience factor is uppermost in the minds of those seeking to either bear a child or get rid of one, nothing is off limits. Professionals and their allies accommodate such self-absorbed needs and, voila, socially polite child abuse becomes tolerable – often even a comfortable choice.
This violence we see and know occurs is emphatically denied by the purveyors of reproductive technology, contraception, and surgical abortion. All of a sudden there is no child, just a problem or an opportunity, depending on how one looks at it.
That "it," of course, is a human individual.
Back in the day, stalwart pro-life political leaders introduced the simply worded Paramount Human Life Amendment as a way of ending the madness. At the time we thought the language was perfect. But today, given the current state of genetic manipulation and the rise in use and abuse of in vitro fertilization, among other things, we realize that the word "fertilization" is inadequate if we wish to protect every person from his biological beginning.
The simple fact is that killing a baby – whether he is one moment old or on the brink of being born alive – is child abuse of the worst kind. Whether that killing occurs in a petri dish, on a laboratory table, in the fallopian tube, or prior to implantation or in the womb, it is still killing a person.
The only way to end socially polite child abuse is to make these facts perfectly clear and repeat them frequently. Lives depend on it.
© Judie Brown
January 24, 2014
Most people will decry the abuse of a child and say that it's one of the worst things a person could do to another. So why aren't these same people crying for the protection of preborn babies – babies who suffer the worst child abuse of all? Thousands of babies are killed every day in America, yet very few condemn this or try to stop it. And the sad fact is that this terrible trend may only get worse unless we can change minds and hearts.
Most Americans do not think of abortion as child abuse. But as Mother Teresa once said, "Any country that accepts abortion is . . . teaching its people . . . to use any violence to get what they want."
I would add that not only does abortion teach people the palatability of violence, it persuades people to lie to themselves. Self-deception has been gripping our land for many years.
The results of this charade are nearly unfathomable when one contemplates the actual number of children who have died over the past forty-plus years. And the manner in which they die is even more disturbing. Or is it?
Current headlines lead us to believe that perhaps the sort of child abuse that occurs prior to birth, rendering the victim dead, is not considered to be a form of violence, and is rather defined as advances in medicine. Take for example the activities of the Shenzhen company in China. The firm has announced it is getting closer to allowing parents to pick the embryo of their choice that is deemed most likely to succeed in life. The firm "is mapping the genes of people who are gifted in maths in a bid to isolate the genes that make them smarter than the average person."
The scientific journal Nature confirms this practice and its popularity saying, "As genetics allows us to turn the tide on human disease, it's also granting the power to engineer desirable traits into humans."
Genetic engineering is setting the stage for a type of super baby. As one report suggests, modifying embryos will become the wave of the future, giving would-be parents the opportunity to select a child in the same way one might choose a piece of fruit from the grocery shelf.
Many babies will die during the course of this embryo design and selection process, each of them rejected due to imperfections. While these embryonic babies may not be viewed as members of the human race by many, if not most, Americans, that does not change the facts.
Mark Oshinskie sees this, and writes, "Following the devaluation of babies in the developed world in the 1970s and 80s, babies became scarce and, consequently, desirable once again. Now, any means used to make babies is seen as good, as long as pregnancy occurs at a convenient time."
Exactly! As long as the convenience factor is uppermost in the minds of those seeking to either bear a child or get rid of one, nothing is off limits. Professionals and their allies accommodate such self-absorbed needs and, voila, socially polite child abuse becomes tolerable – often even a comfortable choice.
This violence we see and know occurs is emphatically denied by the purveyors of reproductive technology, contraception, and surgical abortion. All of a sudden there is no child, just a problem or an opportunity, depending on how one looks at it.
That "it," of course, is a human individual.
Back in the day, stalwart pro-life political leaders introduced the simply worded Paramount Human Life Amendment as a way of ending the madness. At the time we thought the language was perfect. But today, given the current state of genetic manipulation and the rise in use and abuse of in vitro fertilization, among other things, we realize that the word "fertilization" is inadequate if we wish to protect every person from his biological beginning.
The simple fact is that killing a baby – whether he is one moment old or on the brink of being born alive – is child abuse of the worst kind. Whether that killing occurs in a petri dish, on a laboratory table, in the fallopian tube, or prior to implantation or in the womb, it is still killing a person.
The only way to end socially polite child abuse is to make these facts perfectly clear and repeat them frequently. Lives depend on it.
© Judie Brown
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