And so 2019 begins, much as its predecessor began, amid social turmoil, political divisiveness, fiscal uncertainty, and threats of war. Yet we celebrate the new year and hope for the best. There is no question that the economy has improved, that fewer people are unemployed, and fewer still unable to find work if they truly desire it. Wages are up, inflation is down, consumer confidence is high. Therein lies reason to celebrate, I suppose, though all of that may be undermined by the continuing malaise of political and social division.
The Democrats resume control of the House with, apparently, the overriding determination to remove the president from office; and while I have said here before that the sooner he leaves office the better for the nation, it cannot be doubted that the prolonged, vituperative effort to do so which commences this week will cripple our politics and throw a deepening pall over the progress we have made economically. I, for one, do not look forward to months of virulent rhetoric and media bias building to a climax of impeachment.
There are so many more things which need to be done, such as curbing violence in this country, housing the homeless, and resolving for once the dreadful crisis at the Southern border, which both parties have kept broiling for decades for petty, transient partisan reasons. Republicans and Democrats alike churn the immigration issue with each new election cycle, sucking such imagined advantage from it as they perceive, while our sovereignty remains uncertain and the lives of poor people are put at risk. It is very similar to the way in which the Arab religionists and potentates perpetuate the Middle East crisis decade after decade for the sake of their own power.
I do hope that 2019 will see an improvement in our lives and those of our neighbors. But I read recently an article which both causes me to doubt it, and points perhaps to an explanation of the reason for this enduring malaise. The article cited a study of the causes of death throughout the world in the past year, and I was stunned to read that, by far, the leading cause of death was abortion. It outstripped cancer by a factor of four or five times. And I wondered, can this be true? And if it is, what does it say about us as humans and about the world in which we live?
Now, the pro-choicers among you will leap to your perennial rationalization that the fetus is not a human being, but this is just self-interested and politically conditioned sophistry. It is an artificial argument concocted to preserve those who hold it from having to face the possibility of infanticide as a cause which they defend. As I have noted here before, the fetus can only be created by humans, can only develop into a human, and so, as a simple matter of cause and effect, it cannot be anything other than human.
Before proceeding, I ought to remind those who have followed this blog, and inform those who have not, that I recognize the complex and often tragic nature of the decision to abort. And I am keenly aware that as a man my view is not entitled to priority. For those reasons, I have argued in the past, and continue to argue, that there must be a cut-off point beyond which abortion cannot but be considered murder. As I have asked rhetorically: Why is it that abortion is not murder on day 90, yet it is on day 91, for example, or that it is not at 11:59 pm on day 95 but it is at 12:01 am on day 96? For all but the most fanatical advocates of abortion on demand at any point of pregnancy do agree that there is a dividing line between potentiality and humanity.
For that reason, I have suggested that the presence of a detectable heartbeat ought to denote the presence of a viable human being. This normally occurs at about six weeks. To my mind, whatever your political views may be, this tiny, discernible rhythm means that the creature living inside the womb is a human being, and thus marks a moral turning point in the discussion. For no one would disagree that when a heart stops beating forever, a human being has died. And so, let us take the first stirrings of the fetal heart as the cut-off point in the development of both the fetus and the discussion. Before it, abortion may not have to be considered infanticide, but after it, a profound moral question arises which no one, no matter his or her political agenda, can afford to deny.
Having said all this, I return to the article which lists abortion as by far the greatest killer of humans. If this is so, then perhaps we are looking at the cause of so much violence, divisiveness and turmoil in our world - a simple lack of respect for the sanctity of human life. If we are willing to murder tens of millions of babies in the womb every year, and not only defend it on political or moral grounds, but actually forward it as a fundamental human right, then there ought, it seems to me, to be no cause to wonder why we greet each new year with the same, inevitable and unending prospect of man's inhumanity to man. Perhaps the rebirth of the human race as a species cleansed of its most destructive instincts should begin where each new life begins - in the womb.
Which brings me to my original intent for this post - respect for the lives of animals. I was going to say that we would no more kill animals than we would kill children, but the statistic in the article intruded to rob me of that analogy. Of course, if we will disrespect the most innocent form of human life on such a scale, we will extend that callousness to other forms of life without a second thought. Yet animals, all animals, but especially those most native to our society and close to our hearts, have the same right to live as infants.
I was going to say that we ought to consider animals in the same light as we consider children - to be protected, nurtured, saved from suffering. Yet, as the article shows, clearly we do not do so. Any society that will condone mass infanticide will not blanch at the killing of animals. I had set out to argue that we should respect the right of animals to live in peace and innocence, even the most vicious of animals (destroying them only if they threaten our lives), but I find that I cannot do so. In fact, if we argue that we should hold the right to life of animals as precious as we do the lives of babies, then we have defeated our own argument. And here arises a great irony: Based on my reading of modern political correctness, I believe that even fervent pro-abortionists would decry the killing of a dog or cat or horse and would try their best to prevent it.
And so I find myself in the curious position of having to argue at this new year that we should extend to unborn humans the same respect for life as we do to domestic animals. I have to suggest that we should no sooner consider stopping the heartbeat of a fetus than we would strangling the family cat or shooting the family dog. And I am content to make this suggestion to my countrymen, even though the very fact that I must do so points, I think, to a larger blemish on our souls and on the face of our society than we can safely attempt to ignore.
