The American Way of Death

by Paul Greensburg

    "U.S. abortions decline to 1.53 million in '92, fewest since '79." No big deal. The headline was back on Page 5A the other Thursday. Just 1,530,000 abortions a year-down 28,000 from the year before. There haven't been so few since the 1,490,000 in 1979. Only 27.5 percent of pregnancies in the country ended in abortion in 1992, compared to the 30 percent from 1979 to 1983.

    _Only_ 27.5 percent. _Only_ more than one in every four pregnancies aborted. Nowadays a total of a million and a half abortions is ranked among the _fewest_ in recent years.

    There was a time when those figures would have been on Page 1, or in some sci-fi horror story about the Soylent Green world of an ominous future. Well, that future is here. And it rates coverage only on Page 5A. It's not the drop in abortions that's remarkable, but the one in American sensibilities.

    How far the species has come. There was a time-the 14th century Anno Domini when the Aztecs might sacrifice 20,000 a year to the sun upon their blood-red altars, but Modern Man has come a way from such savagery. For one thing, we've dispensed with the ritualistic trappings: No more priests, no more nonsense about the need to assure the corn crop, none of that superstitious, mythological rationalization.

    ndeed, no reason at all need be given now. The sacrifice is now a matter of individual choice. A million and a half individual choices a year. Nobody needs to strap anybody to an altar. That's right: Mothers-well, women-are doing this _voluntarily_.

    "O brave new world," Miranda would gush, "That has such people in it!"

    While old Prospero, finding himself in the middle of this new, enlightened, scientific, sociologically approved and politically correct tempest might only respond, as he always does in the play, "'Tis new to thee."

    For it has gone on long before the Aztecs, this impulse to sacrifice to the latest god. The name of the god might have changed. Moloch, Baal and Astarte gave way some time back to Science, Choice, and-our current favorite-the sovereign and autonomous Self. But the result remains much the same, only on a much more impressive scale. ("U.S. abortions decline to 1.53 million in '92...")

    It's all accepted now. The trick is not to notice. Put it back on Page 5A. Emphasize that _only_ a million and a half are being killed annually, the lowest number since '79.

    Those who object better not do it in the vicinity of an abortion "clinic" or maybe anywhere. They might be accused of threatening or intimidating or interfering with the communicants in this new blood rite, and find themselves subjected to federal penalties-a year in jail and a $10,000 fine for the first such protest, three years and a $25,000 fine for subsequent offenses.

    The first reaction to those who protest any crime against humanity-and there are crimes that need no law to define them-is to shut the troublemakers up. When petitions against slavery began to flood Congress in the 19th century, it responded by passing a gag rule declaring any such discussion illegal. At the tag end of the 20th century, Congress has passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

    The reference in the law's title is to abortion _clinics_. Just as a million and a half _fetuses_ are being destroyed/harvested every year, not a million lives taken. New euphemisms are invented at every stage-like Fetal Research. It's an old rule in these matters: Verbal engineering always precedes social engineering.

    Next the same process begins at the other end of human life. A federal judge in the state of Washington now has ruled that euthanasia is a "constitutionally guaranteed right" under the law's ever expanding penumbra of privacy, which begins to cover American life the way a polyethylene bag might cover an infant's face.

    The first cases of euthanasia, like Sherri Finkbine's plea for an abortion back in 1962, will not fail to stir an understandable sympathy. Now the sad case of the Lakebergs' Siamese twins-both dead after extensive and expensive treatment and publicity-will have its uses for advocates of euthanasia. And who would not sympathize with such arguments in this case? But down the slippery slope await millions of other cases, and the banal acceptance of evil.

     I can remember welcoming _Roe v. Wade_ when it was handed down in 1973. How I would have hooted if somebody had warned that it would result in a million and a half abortions a year. A _mother_ is going to destroy her healthy child for no clear medical reason - with her physician's compliance? Come on.

    What once would have inspired horror is now the mundane - even the scientific, the advanced, the enlightened. What once might have inspired dread is now sanctioned in the elastic name of constitutional right and individual freedom.

    How did we get to this point? Via the usual slippery slope. Most folks don't want to think about it. Others don't believe in the slippery slope, especially if they already have begun to descend it.

    In the Netherlands, they're way ahead of us. Listen to Heleen M. Dupuis, ethicist. (Ethicism replaced ethics some time back, the way religion sometimes replaces God.) Ten years ago, says Ms. Dupuis, when she was president of the Dutch Society for Voluntary Euthanasia, she did not think it "wise" to advocate euthanasia for infants, but not now - "because it is so accepted in the Netherlands."

    Isn't that how the slippery slope works? "I doubt now, more than ever, the validity of slippery slope arguments," responds Ethicist Dupuis, since "we are actively making careful decisions to act in the way we do."

    But isn't that the way it always looks from the bottom of the slope?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

        This resource file is made available by the editors and contributors
        to _The ProLife News_, which is a a free, twice-monthly email
        publication. To receive a sample copy or to subscribe, or to
        receive a list of all of the available Pro Life resource files
        available in the ProLife News Archives, please send a email message
        to the editor: plnews-mod@prolife.netcentral.net.

        In all cases, except where explicitly stated, one should assume that
        the copyright to this file is owned by the author and/or sponsoring
        organization. Copying of this material is free for non-commercial
        use, provided that the contents (including this notice) remain
        intact.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------