Light On Dark Water

Simply Dispose Of Them

I noticed a change in the language of the pamphlet that was
inserted in today’s bulletin for Respect Life Sunday. In
place of the phrase we’ve heard for some years, that human
life is sacred and to be protected “from conception until
natural death,” the pamphlet has “from natural
conception until natural death.” What a world of disorder
and disorientation is implied in that change.

It put me in mind of a conversation I had with a co-worker
some years ago, when in-vitro fertilization was new. She was
young, staunchly Catholic, and either recently or soon to be
married to another co-worker. Last I heard, more than ten years
ago, she had quit her corporate job, and she and her husband were
happy and well on their way toward a large family. I mention all
this by way of saying that she was certainly not disposed to
reject Catholic teaching. But she was puzzled by this one,
especially when juxtaposed with the teaching against artificial
birth control: she couldn’t understand why, if the Church
were so keen on married people having children, it would forbid
this technique for accomplishing precisely that.

Thinking about this, I realized that I really don’t know
much at all about IVF, so I did a Google search which took me
straight to this site.
There I got a very clear answer as to the Church’s reasons
for condemning it, in the question-and-answer section, in
response to the question “What happens to any extra
pre-embryos?” The answer: “One option is to freeze
pre-embryos for your later use. Other options are to donate or
simply dispose of them.”

Whether or not that last phrase gives you a cold chill says a
lot about your attitude toward the question which is the most
decisive and fundamental of our time: whether human life is a
sacred thing or just another object, whether there are any limits
upon our liberty to manipulate it for our own ends. I’ve
sometimes thought that “Respect Life” is a bit weak
and vague as a slogan, but suddenly it seems perfect. One of my
teachers in junior high school used to say that the hallmark of
Western culture was the idea that every human life is sacred. I
think she was right, but whether or not she was right, no one can
dispute that this idea is now held in contempt by the educated
elite of our society.

There is indeed something close to a lust for the destruction
of the old Western idea. It’s of a piece with the lust to
destroy what remains of Christian culture altogether. Perhaps
I’m being hyperbolic, but I don’t think so. I
don’t know what else to make of developments such as the
state of California, a state acknowledged to be in fiscal crisis,
pouring millions of dollars into embryonic stem-cell research
which is, from what I’ve read, a questionable scientific
enterprise.

One engine of this drive to foster contempt for the idea that
human life is unique and sacred is the desperate need clearly
felt by many people to keep abortion available. Any effort to
devalue embryonic life assists that effort. And does anyone
really believe that the fundamental motivator of the drive for
unrestricted abortion is not the drive for the end of all
constraints on sexual activity? The abortion culture wishes to
make uncontroversial that statement I quoted from the IVF FAQ:
that a perfectly good answer to the question of what to do
with the unwanted lives that are sometimes the by-products of
sexual activity is “simply dispose of them.”

I don’t think I knew enough to give my co-worker a very
good answer, all those years ago, about in-vitro fertilization. I
hope she eventually figured it out for herself, perhaps when she
apprehended for the first time that a new person had come into
existence in her womb.