An Under-Observed Front

     For decades we were exhorted to show compassion toward the less fortunate among us. That compassion was particularly for those whose bodies were not up to the normal standard of function or appearance: the crippled, the malformed, those deprived of one or more senses, and so on. And indeed, empathy for such sufferers is a worthy thing, for a human body is attached to a human soul, and all souls are of infinite value in God’s eyes.

     But recently, things started to change, though subtly and (as always) at the “margins.” Certain persons who style themselves “ethicists” have spoken against medical care for the elderly – that portion of our population upon whom age has begun to work its most visible depredations – on the grounds that such resources ought to be reserved for younger people with more years ahead of them. You may have heard the name Daniel Callahan in this connection. Ezekiel Emanuel has said similar things.

     At the other end of life we have “ethicist” Peter Singer, an advocate of post-birth abortion. Singer, originally prominent as an animal-rights activist, turned to abortion in his later years for “utilitarian” reasons. His proclamation that a new mother should have the right to “change her mind” for up to a month after her baby’s birth was only an evolutionary development from the rest of the “pro-choice” position he’d adopted. He also favored the euthanasia of the disabled, the persistently vegetative, and (of course) of babies with severe birth defects.

     And now we have this:

     Sydney Anne Barrett is a young mother with a military husband. You can learn more about her on her website. Sydney suffers from Functional Neurological Disorder, which progressed from bouts of intense pain to her being confined to a wheelchair. The Life Institute reports that not long after her diagnosis, her husband was deployed overseas. Sydney completed college and learned to function in her wheelchair. The couple gave birth to a baby girl.
     […]
     However, when Sydney began to share the stories about being a mom, the creatures of the internet decided to summon the most crude, vile, and despicable sentiments possible and, of course, post them.

     Interested readers can read some of those sentiments at Lincoln Brown’s article. Brown poses comparisons to the Nazis and to the most callous of the eugenicists. Indeed, the similarities and parallels are too conspicuous to be missed.

     The death cults are on the march. They’re ever hungry for more territory in men’s minds. Above all else, they’re against human procreation. They regard humans as excess “ biomass” of no greater significance than the soil, and possibly less. They want us thinking of a newborn child as a “burden,” as a negative impact on “the environment.” Should that child not be physically perfect, they want us to regard him as somehow an impediment on “society,” that amorphous, identity-free construct they conjure up whenever they want to natter about the “greater good.”

     And thanks to contemporary callousness and self-absorption, the deterioration of our sense for the numinous, and the medicalization of all of human existence, they’re gaining ground at a prodigious rate.

     What place is there for compassion in such a vision? What place is there for maternal yearnings and love? What place is there for the sanctity of human life – ironically, the only variety of life the “ethicists” and “environmentalists” deem rightless, to be disposed of without compunction, whenever it’s for “the greater good?”

     I can’t write any more about this subject just now. Perhaps later.