I [Christ] have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. - John 10:10

The Dehumanization of Life

Rev. Robert Fleischmann, National Director, Christian Life Resources
Beginnings, February 199, Vol, 18, No. 1

Shattering the relationship between mother and child

The world is buzzing over the live births of the McCaughey septuplets. On November 18, 1997 Bobbi McCaughey delivered the only known set of surviving septuplets in history. The largest baby weighed 3 pounds 4 ounces, the smallest 2 pounds 5 ounces. All indications are that they are in good health and will survive.

With the hoopla of the delivery have come all sorts of facts and figures about what it will be like raising the septuplets. For example, they are expected to go through at least 49 diapers a day, consume over 11 gallons of formula in a week, cost over $1 million to send them through college, and will, for the time being, allow each parent an average of only about 2 hours of sleep a night. For now, however, the excitement is high and overshadowing what I think is a related but far more shocking story.

In the November 2, 1997, issue of the New York Times Magazine, Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote an appalling article entitled, "Why They Kill Their Newborns." The article is meant as a commentary and possible explanation for a series of recent headline-grabbing stories about women who have killed their newborn children. He observes that all mammals (a biological term which lumps humans and animals together) tend to "decide" whether or not they should permit their offspring to live. Pinker further suggests that our ancestors would let a "newborn die when its prospects for survival to adulthood are poor." The factors which determine the chance for survival were not only the child’s health but also the burden of older children, war or famine in the land, or a mother without a husband or social support. He then goes on to say, "...we inherited that brain circuitry that led to those decisions."

To promote this thesis of neo-naticide Pinker has had to dehumanize the relationship between a mother and her child. He writes: "The emotional response called bonding is also far more complex than the popular view, in which a woman is imprinted with a lifelong attachment to her baby if they interact in a critical period immediately following the baby’s birth. A new mother will first coolly assess the infant’s and her current situation and only in the nest few days begin to see it as a unique and wonderful individual."

My experiences as a father, pastor and observer of many Christian pregnant women and new mothers are quite different from those expressed by Pinker. The bond that I observe between a mother and her child even precedes that first hug and caress. Mothers rarely speak in a detached manner concerning their child in the womb but often quite tenderly refer to it as "my baby."

On more than a few occasions I have had to counsel with a woman who felt that placing a child for adoption was in the best interest of that child. That does not, however, obviate the need of careful counseling with the birth mother who, in many ways, mourns for her child. She mourns because they have already bonded.

More and more of the counselors at our pregnancy counseling centers around the world comment on the increase in clients suffering from post-abortion syndrome. It is not simply guilt that has struck these women for having aborted their child. They report nightmares of seeing their child grown up or seeing themselves cuddling their child was in the womb.

Pinker’s problem, and the problem of others who have sought to dehumanize young life, disabled life or elderly life is that they fail to understand the uniqueness of the human experience over against that of animals. By dehumanizing life they reduce it to its most common denominator – and existence without inherent value, substantive emotions or accountability.

Secondly, Pinker and others fail to understand what Christianity really says about unborn and vulnerable life. Pinker observes, "Full personhood is often not automatically granted at birth, as we see in our rituals of christening and in the Jewish bris." Pinker’s ignorance of the significance of baptism only further reveals that he has wrapped himself up in a philosophical construct designed to reinforce his preconceived notions. In other words, it is as if to say, "I want to see human life as nothing more than a form of an animal. For that reason, all other matters that come to bear on the issue have to be reconstructed to conform tr my notion of human life."

Practically speaking, Pinker accomplishes that by rewriting the significance of baptism. Nowhere in the tenets of the Christian faith is there any suggestion that there is no "personhood" before baptism. That is a conclusion Pinker reaches to support his erroneous presupposition.

As one considers the burdens ahead for Kenny and Bobbi McCaughey in raising their seven newborn children comments like those from Pinker are more than alarming. The McCaugheys were informed that even in the womb they could increase prospects for survival by selectively aborting some of their children. Pinker would seem to suggest that leaving that door open after birth should be an option.

Ultimately he must dehumanize human life. When he discussed where to draw the line on when a person could rightfully be killed he spoke of a right to life. But he wrongly spoke of it in this situation. He said, "Perhaps only the members of our own species, Homo sapiens, have a right to life? But that is simply chauvinism; a person of one race could just as easily say that people of another race have no right to life." It is clear Pinker has even sacrificed fundamental logic in trying to state his case.

Pinker’s apparent toleration for allowing or accommodating infanticide is hardly anything new in contemporary society. I have run across other shocking examples that suggest a toleration, if not an endorsement, of infanticide.

In 1962 Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and James Watson won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for their work on nucleic acid. In the May 1973 issue of Prism magazine Watson wrote, "If a child were not declared alive until three seconds after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only rational, compassionate attitude to have." Watson was later to serve for a short time as the first director of the Human Genome Project.

In January 1978 radio interview Francis Crick said the following: "No newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests, it forfeits the right to live."

Pinker’s dehumanization of the newborn was a reflection of a view espoused by Peter Singer of the Center for Human Bioethics, Monash University - Victoria. In the July 1983 issue of Pediatrics magazine he made this shocking comparison: "If we compare a severely defective human infant with a non-human animal, a dog or a pig, for example, we will find the non-human to have superior capacities..." And "We can no longer base our ethics on the idea that human beings are a special form of creation, made in the image of God, singled out from all other animals, and alone possessing an immortal soul..."

The unique value of human life is not dependent upon its ability to have a unique sequence of experiences. It is not dependent upon a consensus arrived at by moral philosophers or an agreement between two sides of the abortion debate. Rather, a more objective and authoritarian voice must be heard. It is the voice of the Creator of human life.

It is God who says, "I put to death and I bring to life" (Deuteronomy 32:39). While I have personal reservations about the role of fertility drugs in multiple pregnancies (Bobbi McCaughey was on Pergonal) I applaud the Christian convictions of the McCaugheys when they rejected abortion as a consideration. I am concerned, however, that the fears of the past that aborting children is a small step from allowing their death through infanticide, are coming true. Pinker’s outrageous article must be rejected for its assault on God, on human life, and the fundamental truth that is a gift to us to care for, not a commodity for us to barter or destroy.

Article Shortcut: http://www.christianliferesources.com?4977

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