There are a number of defining features of the post-Christian West. Some of our highest virtues and values now include personal autonomy, personal choice, and personal convenience. Pleasing self and maximising personal happiness are seen as the epitome of the good life, while concerns for neighbour and community are barely considered.
When self becomes God then all other life becomes secondary. Indeed, in the attempt to elevate and deify self, we in fact demonise humankind and declare war on personhood. Dehumanisation and disrespect for human life follows directly from this.
Instant gratification and complete surrender to our every wish and desire have become the hallmarks of modern man. And the ramifications of this are found everywhere. In the area of family life, for example, babies are now considered to be mere commodities, to be designed and disposed of at our whim.
We live in an age of designer babies, throwaway marriages and disposable families. What used to keep families, communities and societies together are now sniffed at. Things such as self-sacrifice, forgiveness, patience, the deferral of gratification, and the consideration of others has now taken a back seat to the gorging of self.
A perfect illustration of all this appeared in today’s press. Consider this gut-wrenching and mind-numbing piece about yet another bizarre lawsuit. Here is how one press account presents the story:
“Two Victorian couples are suing doctors for failing to diagnose Down syndrome in their unborn babies, denying them the chance to terminate the pregnancies. The couples are claiming unspecified damages for economic loss, continuing costs of care of the children, and ‘psychiatric injury’. Both say they would have aborted their pregnancies had they been told their children would be born with Down syndrome.”
The story was also covered on the current affairs shows last night. The parents were complaining of how very hard it is to look after these children, and that they really would have rather aborted the babies had they been given the chance. So now they are seeking damages for their “psychiatric injury” and suffering.
These parents want our sympathy – and government money. Sorry, but I cannot give such sympathy, nor agree to such demands for payments. Do special needs children present special challenges and burdens? Yes, absolutely. But guess what, anything worthwhile in life presents obstacles, challenges and hardships.
Indeed, sacrifice is the name of the game if we want to support anything which is valuable and worthwhile. In fact, every single child ever born is a huge handful. They place enormous demands on you for a good twenty years, and continue to do so for as long as they live.
Not only will they cost you at least a quarter of a million dollars between ages 0 to 18, but they will cost you emotionally, physically, psychologically and mentally. Simply to love another person is costly. And children can be the most costly objects of love around.
Of course real love usually discounts or ignores the tremendous costs. Any parent worth his or her salt will gladly make a dozen major sacrifices a day out of love for their offspring. Indeed, simply to love another person will of necessity impose restrictions and limitations on self.
All true love is self-giving, not self-taking. To love another person is to give away part of yourself, to become vulnerable, to take risks, and to be willing to hurt. If you do not want to hurt, then do not love. A parent’s love may be among the world’s greatest love, because it may hurt the most and cost the most. But love happily embraces such hurts, sacrifices and burdens.
As mentioned, those born with physical or mental incapacities are obviously going to be somewhat more of a handful. But they are all still beautiful sons and daughters who deserve to be loved. They do not deserve the guilt trip put upon them by parents who complain about their very existence, their very right to life.
But these two couples are not alone in this. As mentioned, we now live in an age completely given over to selfishness and the deification of self. We are all looking out for number one now, and anything that will inconvenience us, cost us, or weary us, we would rather just jettison.
So when we weary of the toaster, we chuck it and get a new one. When the plasma TV begins to play up, we quickly grow tired of it and ditch it for a newer, bigger model. And when the children we bring into the world are not perfect, we look to sue someone.
While we all want the best for our children and for our loved ones, the quest for the perfect baby – or the perfect anything – is a futile and ultimately selfish quest. Life offers no guarantees, and love is developed and enhanced in the furnaces of affliction, hardship and trials.
Such talk of course seems quaint today, even offensive. We expect, and demand, perfection. Designer babies are now a part of this demand for only the best, the most convenient, and the most hassle-free. If we don’t get a free ride through life, we will find someone or something to blame – and to issue a lawsuit against.
Of course the social quest for perfection is not new. It has been around for some time now. Indeed, we have a term for it. It is called eugenics. This is a movement which had its ideological origins in naturalistic Darwinism, and came into complete expression in the Third Reich. It has long been an evil which civilised nations shunned – or should have shunned.
However, while in the past it was fanatical population controllers and Nazi doctors who engaged in eugenics, now unfortunately it is ordinary parents who are doing it. We have fully bought into the lies of the eugenicists. We want to create a perfect race, or at least a bunch of kids who will give us no problems, make no demands on us, and only serve to please us and meet our needs.
In that sense we may not be so very different from the monsters of Nazi Germany. Sure, we are refined, civilised, and cultured now. But recall that Germany in the 1930s was one of the most cultured, well educated, and progressive nations on earth.
Such conditions did not stop their fall into complete darkness. Nor will they prevent us from descending into a similar sort of barbarism. Today it is “small” things like suing a doctor for not giving us a “perfect” baby. Tomorrow it may be the passage of a law demanding that only perfect specimens are allowed to be brought into this world.
The Brave New World scenarios as depicted in a film like Gattaca may soon be upon us. We will not get there in an instant, but piecemeal – one innocuous sounding step at a time. But the bitter and bleak end will nonetheless still be reached.
If Trisomy 21 (Downs’) makes a child not worth allowing to live, guess it’s just as well there aren’t tests for things like high/low IQ, disregard for human rights or the wrong colour hair. (Can you imagine what the lefties would do with a test for ‘respect for life’?)
I have spent time with some lovely downs’ people – I had a couple in my class at (mainstream) school. They’re awesome people and if they aren’t “good enough”, it really makes me wonder where you draw the line…
… since you mention both Brave New World and Gattaca: Brave New World is the most foul, nightmarish book I have ever read on the topic, and Gattaca is on the VCE curriculum (or was last i checked) for very good reason! I highly recommend watching Gattaca to anyone who hasn’t seen it.
Alison Keen
Oh Bill, how wonderful, thank you SO MUCH for this.
Please keep speaking the truth about the preciousness of human life. None of us is perfect, but we should all strive to be. When we devalue life we devalue God, and vice-versa.
Barbara Murray-Leach
What a phenomenal article!
Dorian Ballard
I saw that and was muttering under my breath as I walked down Clayton Road this morning. How selfish! They didn’t want to abort a healthy child but were quite prepared to abort one with Downs. Taken to its logical conclusion, that kind of thinking will also make people say “Oh I wanted a girl, if it’s a boy I’ll abort” – or even “I’ll abort if it doesn’t have blonde hair”.
Michael Angelico
Bill I only hope that this article finds its way into as many media outlets, personal networking sites, politicians’ letterboxes and people’s hearts and minds as possible. WE all stand convicted when the society of which we are a part falls into such grave and ghastly practices. You are doing all you can, with the gifts you have to change that. God Bless and prosper you!
Kenya Lowther
There’s something totally upside down about going to court to penalize someone for supposedly not giving you the opportunity to plan a murder. Also, I’m sure the children will be thrilled to grow up and find out their parents were disappointed enough in them to try to get a court to agree they were worth less than others. Actions speak louder than words. Such ‘compassion’ that follows this pro-abortion ideology, does it not? Is this what Julia ‘EMILY’s List’ Gillard considers “moving forward”? Any real civilized society’s legal system would not give an application of this nature 5 minutes before it threw it out.
My niece is Down’s Syndrome and is a joy. Also, I was unplanned and I am abstinent. I really despise abortion, not just for what it is, but what it does to the consciences of those involved in it. Can’t they see?!? Are they really filled with such darkness and rage? Truly, the devil is a liar, a thief, and a murderer. Molech worship is alive and well in the 21st Century, the very same justifications from the same evil spirit.
Mark Rabich
Thanks Bill, this truly is depressing.
Ironically as far as I can see, the only wrongful lives present here are those of these narcissistic boobs who are bringing the law suits in the first place.
Win or lose the law suit, these parents should have their children taken from them because they are clearly intent on abusing the child and perhaps they should be sterilized as they are clearly barely qualified to be human beings let alone parents.
Jason Rennie
Bill,
I find it it so hard to imagine that these parents would do that. It is to put oneself in a very ugly place. I can agree with Mark that the children will be thrilled to learn that they weren’t good enough to be kept alive, which will tear apart whatever sense of “I am valuable” that they may receive.
But Jason, surely you speak with tongue in cheek, for for sterilisation is part of the eugenics movement also. There are millions of people whom you and I could put into this “unworthy” category, but we play God, (or rather Satan) and an ugly one at that. Far better to express Him to those parents and others without Him.
It is also not only the parents that need a new way of living, but all those who take up their case and those that permit it to get to first base.
Our last child was totally unexpected, but not unloved. It was a very pleasurable discovery. How incredible and marvellous that we as pro-creators can give rise to another person in whom the life of God can reside and be seen.
How insecure it is to live in a society of me firstism. No one is safe from the whim of another as there is no restraint borne out of a over arching moral code that values everyone equally (though there is more to it than that).
From this legal action it can be seen that 100% faultless performance is expected of someone else (doctors), but I wonder if these people would want others to expect that performance of them?
Robert Greggery
Dear Bill, this article meant especially much to me as our last boy is Downs and he is the greatest blessing God ever gave us. For those poor Downs children whose parents are mounting this horrible law suit, it is probably a blessing that Downs children are blessed with a happy innocent and trusting nature,so they may never know and therefore hopefully not feel the pain of rejection. I certainly pray the Lord will protect them from it. But the parents need our prayers most of all.
Blessings
Ursula Bennett
More designer life:
In her latest whitewash of her now husband, Blanche D’Alpuget accuses Hazel Hawke of being married to Bob “only for the perks of office as PM”.
AND the accusation is NOT roundly condemned (other than by Andrew Bolt), but passes along with all the rest of the preposterous blandishments she spews forth!
Others have claimed that retired PMs Hawke and Keating have each abandoned their first wives after leaving politics – as if they “needed” a trophy wife & family for public view, but were then allowed to ditch them when their political uses were past!
Such an outrageous idea should never have been publicised, and if those two had done just that, they should have been condemned up and down the country.
John Angelico
I worked for many years in Disability and know that people with disabilities have so much to offer. In fact when working closely with someone with a disability after a little while you begin to no longer see the ‘disability’ but the person and all the ‘abilities’ they have.
I now work in radio and talked about this story on air the other morning. I steered clear of giving my opinion at that time but asked listeners for their thoughts. A man called and was very upset that I had mentioned it on air. Surely it’s better to be informed and aware of things happening in our world, rather than sticking our head in the sand?
Thanks Bill for keeping us informed!
Scott Haas
Is it any shock that this is a picture of our society? Left to our own natural inclination, without God, we will all slide downwards. God, how we need Him.
Rom 1:28: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind…”
I confess, as a Christian, I also found something to repent of from your article.
DS and special needs people are very precious and can teach us a lot about love; I know this first hand.
This is probably a familiar story, that I cannot re-tell without crying.
At the 1976 Special Olympics, nine contestants, all physically or mentally challenged, assembled at the starting line for the 100-yard dash. At the gun, they all started out, not exactly in a dash, but with a relish to run the race to the finish and win.
All, that is, except one boy who stumbled on the asphalt, tumbled over a couple of times and began to cry. Two of the others heard the boy cry. They slowed down and looked back. They turned around and went back.
One girl with Down’s Syndrome bent down and kissed him and said, “This will make it better.” They then linked arms and walked across the finish line together.
Everyone in the stadium stood, and the cheering went on for several minutes.
No one has a right to determine who lives and dies. Everyone has a right to live.
Samia Sedhom
Many thanks Samia for all this.
As to the first link, the most horrible and chilling line in the story was that of the mother: “Both are autistic. I don’t want my kids to be like that. I want normal kids.”
God have mercy on us all.
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
See also Eugenics and the Left, showing how leftists, feminists, and greenies all jumped aboard the eugenics bandwagon in the decades before WW2.
Jonathan Sarfati, USA
What a truly gut-wrenching story.
I believe some Greens are eugenicists at heart. As their ideas and values gain influence in society, we can expect similar stuff and even worse. I’m thinking of Peter Singer’s views on parents’ “rights” to murder their children aged less than two years whom they deem not fit to live.
Anna Cook
Thanks Bill this is a real eye opener. Unfortunately this is not where it will stop. Apparently in Holland 8% of infant death are as a result of euthanasia sanctioned by the parents, supported by the law of the land. If baby is not fulfilling enough they can opt out with euthanasia.
Bill Heggers, W.A.
We have the RSPCA fining people for abusing animals and removing animals from their care… yet someone can abort …Murder a baby and then go on to have more? Doesn’t make sense does it? If you kill a baby then I think you surrender your right to have another! It Proves that you are too selfish to raise a child.
God help these children if they ever comprehend that their parents thought they were better off dead…For the Parents Sake!
Alison Williams
DCS should take their children from them if they have so blatantly professed they do not want them; let some couple who is desperate for children adopt them and give them the unconditional love parents by nature should give their children.
Catherine Dodd
If Trisomy 21 (Downs’) makes a child not worth allowing to live, guess it’s just as well there aren’t tests for things like high/low IQ, disregard for human rights or the wrong colour hair. (Can you imagine what the lefties would do with a test for ‘respect for life’?)
I have spent time with some lovely downs’ people – I had a couple in my class at (mainstream) school. They’re awesome people and if they aren’t “good enough”, it really makes me wonder where you draw the line…
… since you mention both Brave New World and Gattaca: Brave New World is the most foul, nightmarish book I have ever read on the topic, and Gattaca is on the VCE curriculum (or was last i checked) for very good reason! I highly recommend watching Gattaca to anyone who hasn’t seen it.
Alison Keen
Oh Bill, how wonderful, thank you SO MUCH for this.
Please keep speaking the truth about the preciousness of human life. None of us is perfect, but we should all strive to be. When we devalue life we devalue God, and vice-versa.
Barbara Murray-Leach
What a phenomenal article!
Dorian Ballard
I saw that and was muttering under my breath as I walked down Clayton Road this morning. How selfish! They didn’t want to abort a healthy child but were quite prepared to abort one with Downs. Taken to its logical conclusion, that kind of thinking will also make people say “Oh I wanted a girl, if it’s a boy I’ll abort” – or even “I’ll abort if it doesn’t have blonde hair”.
Michael Angelico
Bill I only hope that this article finds its way into as many media outlets, personal networking sites, politicians’ letterboxes and people’s hearts and minds as possible. WE all stand convicted when the society of which we are a part falls into such grave and ghastly practices. You are doing all you can, with the gifts you have to change that. God Bless and prosper you!
Kenya Lowther
There’s something totally upside down about going to court to penalize someone for supposedly not giving you the opportunity to plan a murder. Also, I’m sure the children will be thrilled to grow up and find out their parents were disappointed enough in them to try to get a court to agree they were worth less than others. Actions speak louder than words. Such ‘compassion’ that follows this pro-abortion ideology, does it not? Is this what Julia ‘EMILY’s List’ Gillard considers “moving forward”? Any real civilized society’s legal system would not give an application of this nature 5 minutes before it threw it out.
My niece is Down’s Syndrome and is a joy. Also, I was unplanned and I am abstinent. I really despise abortion, not just for what it is, but what it does to the consciences of those involved in it. Can’t they see?!? Are they really filled with such darkness and rage? Truly, the devil is a liar, a thief, and a murderer. Molech worship is alive and well in the 21st Century, the very same justifications from the same evil spirit.
Mark Rabich
Thanks Bill, this truly is depressing.
Ironically as far as I can see, the only wrongful lives present here are those of these narcissistic boobs who are bringing the law suits in the first place.
Win or lose the law suit, these parents should have their children taken from them because they are clearly intent on abusing the child and perhaps they should be sterilized as they are clearly barely qualified to be human beings let alone parents.
Jason Rennie
Bill,
I find it it so hard to imagine that these parents would do that. It is to put oneself in a very ugly place. I can agree with Mark that the children will be thrilled to learn that they weren’t good enough to be kept alive, which will tear apart whatever sense of “I am valuable” that they may receive.
But Jason, surely you speak with tongue in cheek, for for sterilisation is part of the eugenics movement also. There are millions of people whom you and I could put into this “unworthy” category, but we play God, (or rather Satan) and an ugly one at that. Far better to express Him to those parents and others without Him.
It is also not only the parents that need a new way of living, but all those who take up their case and those that permit it to get to first base.
Our last child was totally unexpected, but not unloved. It was a very pleasurable discovery. How incredible and marvellous that we as pro-creators can give rise to another person in whom the life of God can reside and be seen.
How insecure it is to live in a society of me firstism. No one is safe from the whim of another as there is no restraint borne out of a over arching moral code that values everyone equally (though there is more to it than that).
From this legal action it can be seen that 100% faultless performance is expected of someone else (doctors), but I wonder if these people would want others to expect that performance of them?
Robert Greggery
Dear Bill, this article meant especially much to me as our last boy is Downs and he is the greatest blessing God ever gave us. For those poor Downs children whose parents are mounting this horrible law suit, it is probably a blessing that Downs children are blessed with a happy innocent and trusting nature,so they may never know and therefore hopefully not feel the pain of rejection. I certainly pray the Lord will protect them from it. But the parents need our prayers most of all.
Blessings
Ursula Bennett
More designer life:
In her latest whitewash of her now husband, Blanche D’Alpuget accuses Hazel Hawke of being married to Bob “only for the perks of office as PM”.
AND the accusation is NOT roundly condemned (other than by Andrew Bolt), but passes along with all the rest of the preposterous blandishments she spews forth!
Others have claimed that retired PMs Hawke and Keating have each abandoned their first wives after leaving politics – as if they “needed” a trophy wife & family for public view, but were then allowed to ditch them when their political uses were past!
Such an outrageous idea should never have been publicised, and if those two had done just that, they should have been condemned up and down the country.
John Angelico
I worked for many years in Disability and know that people with disabilities have so much to offer. In fact when working closely with someone with a disability after a little while you begin to no longer see the ‘disability’ but the person and all the ‘abilities’ they have.
I now work in radio and talked about this story on air the other morning. I steered clear of giving my opinion at that time but asked listeners for their thoughts. A man called and was very upset that I had mentioned it on air. Surely it’s better to be informed and aware of things happening in our world, rather than sticking our head in the sand?
Thanks Bill for keeping us informed!
Scott Haas
Is it any shock that this is a picture of our society? Left to our own natural inclination, without God, we will all slide downwards. God, how we need Him.
Rom 1:28: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind…”
I confess, as a Christian, I also found something to repent of from your article.
Thanks Bill
Annette Nestor
This is another horror story: http://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-mom-told-911-strangling-autistic-children/story?id=11227619
DS and special needs people are very precious and can teach us a lot about love; I know this first hand.
This is probably a familiar story, that I cannot re-tell without crying.
At the 1976 Special Olympics, nine contestants, all physically or mentally challenged, assembled at the starting line for the 100-yard dash. At the gun, they all started out, not exactly in a dash, but with a relish to run the race to the finish and win.
All, that is, except one boy who stumbled on the asphalt, tumbled over a couple of times and began to cry. Two of the others heard the boy cry. They slowed down and looked back. They turned around and went back.
One girl with Down’s Syndrome bent down and kissed him and said, “This will make it better.” They then linked arms and walked across the finish line together.
Everyone in the stadium stood, and the cheering went on for several minutes.
Here are more touching stories about these very beautiful people.
http://www.specialolympics.org/stories.aspx
No one has a right to determine who lives and dies. Everyone has a right to live.
Samia Sedhom
Many thanks Samia for all this.
As to the first link, the most horrible and chilling line in the story was that of the mother: “Both are autistic. I don’t want my kids to be like that. I want normal kids.”
God have mercy on us all.
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
See also Eugenics and the Left, showing how leftists, feminists, and greenies all jumped aboard the eugenics bandwagon in the decades before WW2.
Jonathan Sarfati, USA
Thanks Jonathan
And then there is the Darwin connection: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2007/04/16/darwin-and-eugenics/
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
What a truly gut-wrenching story.
I believe some Greens are eugenicists at heart. As their ideas and values gain influence in society, we can expect similar stuff and even worse. I’m thinking of Peter Singer’s views on parents’ “rights” to murder their children aged less than two years whom they deem not fit to live.
Anna Cook
Thanks Bill this is a real eye opener. Unfortunately this is not where it will stop. Apparently in Holland 8% of infant death are as a result of euthanasia sanctioned by the parents, supported by the law of the land. If baby is not fulfilling enough they can opt out with euthanasia.
Bill Heggers, W.A.
We have the RSPCA fining people for abusing animals and removing animals from their care… yet someone can abort …Murder a baby and then go on to have more? Doesn’t make sense does it? If you kill a baby then I think you surrender your right to have another! It Proves that you are too selfish to raise a child.
God help these children if they ever comprehend that their parents thought they were better off dead…For the Parents Sake!
Alison Williams
DCS should take their children from them if they have so blatantly professed they do not want them; let some couple who is desperate for children adopt them and give them the unconditional love parents by nature should give their children.
Catherine Dodd
Absolute madness!
Steve Davis
Wilhelmus Heggers
Do you have any proof or documentation of this?
Diana McInnes
Thanks Diana
The New England Journal of Medicine reported this figure: http://www.chninternational.com/euthanasia__and_assisted_suicide_a_s.htm
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch