The Supreme Court decision made 37 years ago this week, changed the way that Americans viewed the sanctity of life. Though maybe not at first, but thirty years later, we see the toll that this decision has taken on issues from abortion to euthanasia.
Science has been misused and abused in the name of life issues and I will cover that topic in detail for the next several postings.
However, today, I'm including a paragraph from Benedict XVI, the current Catholic pope. Though I have many thoughts on the life issue, I wanted to include these ideological thoughts as a primer before I start into the science because without philosophy, science is crippled.
"Openness to life is at the center of true development. When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man's true good. If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of a new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away. The acceptance of life strengthens moral fiber and makes people capable of mutual help. By cultivating openness to life, wealthy peoples can better understand the needs of poor ones, they can avoid employing huge economic and intellectual resources to satisfy the selfish desires of their own citizens, and instead, they can promote virtuous action within the perspective of production that is morally sound and marked by solidarity, respecting the fundamental right to life of every people and every individual."
(from Caritas in Veritate 28. www.vatican.va)
The pope talks about wealthy people understanding the plight of poor people and that an openness to life nurtures such an attitude. To underscore this philosophy, I offer the following link to a news story about a Denver nurse who helped in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake.
Her story shows that even among the awful conditions and status of life lost in Haiti, the birth of one little child impacted her whole life. We can never underestimate the importance of human life no matter what the circumstance.
