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Subject: [breakpoint] Dangerous Redefinitions, 9/20/2000
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 13:02:56 -0800
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BreakPoint with Charles Colson
Commentary #000920 - 9/20/2000
Dangerous Redefinitions: Are Newborns "Persons?" 


It sounds like the baby shower from hell. As cake and
punch are passed around, a doctor runs medical tests
on a month-old baby. If he passes the tests, the
guests welcome the child to the human community. But
if the baby fails -- if he has, say, Down's syndrome,
or cerebral palsy -- the parents bid him a sad
farewell.

And then, the doctor snuffs out his life.

Believe it or not, a Princeton professor thinks
parties like these would be a good idea. This is a
tragic illustration that the killing of a month-old
child -- once absolutely unthinkable -- has become a
debatable moral question.

In an article entitled "Killing Babies Isn't Always
Wrong," philosopher Peter Singer writes: "Perhaps,
like the ancient Greeks, we should have a ceremony a
month after birth, at which the infant is admitted to
the community. Before that time," he says, "infants
would not be recognized as having the same right to
life as older people."

This means that if the child is considered
"defective" in some way, the parents would presumably
have a different kind of ceremony -- one that ends
with child being admitted, not to the human
community, but to a grave.

This is morally acceptable, Singer says, because
newborns, while indisputably human, are not really
persons. They don't become persons, and acquire a
right to life, until weeks or even months after birth
because they lack "self-awareness."

Extreme beliefs, yes, but Singer is hardly alone in
espousing them. As far back as 1972, University of
Colorado philosopher Michael Tooley was saying that
fetuses and infants are non-persons who "do not have
a right to life."

American University philosopher Jeffrey Reiman
agrees. He maintains that infants do not "possess in
their own right a property that makes it wrong to
kill them." I could go on and on. But suffice it to
say that people who wish to destroy handicapped or
just plain unwanted newborns have influential
supporters. And they're getting more and more
aggressive.

Well, we can't say we weren't warned. In the 1960s,
as the abortion movement gained momentum, critics
warned that the logic of abortion would lead directly
from the womb to the cradle: Babies already born
would become the next targets.

These critics have been proven right. Three decades
after Roe v. Wade, influential voices are clamoring
for out-and-out infanticide.

The reasoning behind it -- that newborns are somehow
less than human -- is already seeping into society.
Witness the rash of "dumpster babies" -- newborns
thrown out by their mothers.

If this nation ever condones infanticide, we will be
destroying the very principle that is at the heart of 
Judeo-Christian concepts of human rights and
equality, namely, that it's always wrong to
deliberately kill innocent human beings.

Florida Congressman Charles Canady is among those
trying to prevent this dangerous redefinition. He has
introduced a bill called the "Born Alive Infants
Protection Act." Now, I know the abortion issue has
been around a long time, and people get weary of it.
But I urge you to learn more about this bill, and you
can do so by visiting our BreakPoint webpage
(www.breakpoint.org).

A bill like this is a vital and important protection
against those hideous "baby showers" that Peter
Singer proposes -- celebrations that end only in
death.

Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries

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