Culture of Death

Over recent years and months, I have been reading and watching the trends of our country slip slowly towards a culture of death. I guess it started with Roe v Wade when we women were given a choice over our bodies. We were told that we were in control and that as a major victory in the women's rights movement, we were given the gift of whether we wanted the babies forming in our wombs or not. Not only that, we didn't have to have anyone's permission, it could be done in secret, walk into a clinic and walk out unpregnant. Wow, what a concept!

No more did we have to slink into filthy back alleys and risk infection or death from the hands of a butcher. No more did we have to risk an unfruitful womb by trying to "take care of it ourselves". My own maternal grandmother died at the hands of butcher in 1935. So it is personal to me this "choice". My grandmother was married to an alcoholic – a weak man on top of that. She didn't want any more babies with him. The two daughters she had were 15 and 10 (my own mother being the oldest). I don't know the details of what happened to her; only that she died from an abortion. It was kept from me how she died until I was a teenager.

Further, when my own mother found out she was pregnant with my sister when I was eleven, she too tried to terminate the pregnancy. She sought out a family friend to see if he could connect her to someone trustworthy. She took me with her on this trip but I was clueless why and what we were doing. Apparently, she was unsuccessful because one day after we had returned from the trip, she came to the door of my bedroom to say to me, "We can't leave Lee (my stepfather) because I am going to have a baby." She handed me a booklet (on how babies are made) and walked out of the room.

Since the Roe v Wade decision, millions of women in this country have made the choice in the last 30 or so years to "terminate" their pregnancies. Fortunately, for me, I never had to make this choice. I truthfully cannot tell you that I would NOT have done this; I really don't know. All I do know is that if I had been faced with this decision and had made the decision to abort a baby forming in my womb, I would have felt the guilt my entire life. Even if I had legitimate reasons for doing so, I would nonetheless be guilty of murdering another human being. That is how I would feel; I know this about me.

I often wonder how we as a nation and a culture can knowingly accept that we are condoning murder. How can our legislature pass "Connor's Law" and yet allow abortion clinics to terminate pregnancies? I don't get that. We are moving further down this road of death as well. Now when a pregnant woman has an ultrasound that reveals any abnormality with her developing baby, she is offered the choice of terminating her pregnancy. Anything "wrong" with the baby? Okay, let us kill it and try again. No Down's Syndrome, no spina bifida, no missing limbs, no abnormalities - we will have perfect babies.

I thank God that my daughter chose not to have an ultrasound during her pregnancy. It surely would have revealed the omphalocele my granddaughter had. All kinds of horrors (options) would have been placed before her. She would have been told that the chance of survival wasn't not good for this baby. She would have been told that the chances of the baby having severe complications (heart, lung, liver etc.) were likely. I am sure she would have been told it would "best" to terminate this long-awaited pregnancy. I am eternally grateful she didn't know any of this.

Why? Because the child born to them, Hanna Stephanie Burns, is one special little girl. She is bright, beautiful, caring, strong and truly a little angel. No, she isn't perfect – she is a typical child that tests her parents, fights with her brother, loves to play, sing, talk, and just generally a normal kid. She had no complications other than scarring which was recently repaired. This world would have had something missing from it had Hanna Stephanie Burns not been brought into it.

That is the problem with this new technology – we are given choices we shouldn't have. Yes, I know the argument that these children with mental or physical problems don't "ask to be born" but they also don't ask to die. With this trend to terminate "problem" pregnancies, we also are moving towards ending lives that are less than productive too. The person who comes to mind is the young woman in Florida, Terri, whose husband sought to end her life. She was no good to society, the proponents say. Her husband was adamant that Terri wouldn't want to live this way. Yet, this same man who claims he was protecting her "right" also refused to do anything that might have improved her circumstances.

Is this what we will be doing ten years from now? Senior citizens (that would be me!) who are disabled, have Alzeihmers disease, or other dementia will be "better off" if they are allowed to die? Or worse, their lives will be terminated? God forbid but if we are not careful and continue this path of death, it will lead here. I believe that emphatically.

The same applies to those are suffering from terminal diseases like cancer, AIDS – they are no good to society. They cost us money and they don't work on top of that. The argument in the culture of death is that no one person should impede the progress of society. Whether that person is a growing baby, an ailing senior, a developmentally disabled adult, a gay man dying from AIDS, they must be sacrificed for the good of society. Just as a baby is inconvenient for a young woman, the above examples pose all sorts of inconvenience to their families, community, and society.

When are we going to stop this culture of death? When is enough going to be enough? I pray for God's mercy on us if we won't wake up soon and start moving toward life not death. That is the real choice we have before us now. We as a society and culture can make choices in our personal behavior, we can at every level of government make choices for life not death. I pray we do so and quickly.