Who Moved the Finish Line?

We've arrived at a stunning point of convergence in time. As the Supreme Court wrestles with the subject of euthanasia...future candidates for that bench are being vetted through the filter of their position on abortion. We battle to convince science that it is wrong to create humans, only to use them for body parts...as Canada toys with the idea of "testing" human embryos for genetic "flaws," before deciding whether to allow them to become full-term babies. As advocates for either side of each debate square off, it becomes clear that proponents of euthanasia, abortion, eugenics, and a half-dozen other such ghoulish notions see these "choices" as some sort of "civil right."

Much like the homosexual lobby, which warned the government to "stay out of the bedroom"...and the abortion crowd, demanding "hands off my body"...the culture of death attempts to frame its arguments as a sort of libertarian stand against an overweening, totalitarian state. Since when is murder a subject of personal freedom? Who says that the ability to take one's own life, or that of a loved one, or of an imperfect unborn baby, is somehow an expression of one's "Constitutional rights?" On the contrary: the words of our founders and framers codify the right to life, in the words of the Declaration of Independence…but literally nowhere are we guaranteed the right to death!

The struggle to remain alive is part of the natural order of things. Those trapped inside a burning building or sinking ship won’t peacefully submit to the inevitability of death. They claw, scratch, and scrape to remain living. Such natural law should provide clear instruction for the designs of man, and his government.

Oh, this is not mere oversimplification of a complicated issue. Part of the responsibility of any viable government is to protect the weak from the strong. There are reasons why you can't just shoot someone who offends you, or steal the property of someone with less money than you, or enslave those less powerful than yourself. We've designed laws to protect us from such outcomes. Man does not, and will not ever, have the wisdom to choose whether any innocent human being deserves to die.

Case in point: a story in today’s newspaper. It’s about an Italian man who spent two years supposedly unconscious...in a deep coma...written off by doctors as all but dead. Thankfully, his family never pulled the plug, because Salvatore Crisafulli has awakened. Crisafulli testifies that he heard and understood everything happening around him during the long ordeal. This father of four is describing his case as a "miracle"...proving that lost causes are, indeed, anything but hopeless.

His brother calls Crisafulli "an Italian Terri Schiavo." Perhaps...but with one significant difference. Owing to the laws of his nation’s government, Salvatore Crisafulli gets to live another day...Schiavo's parents may only grieve. As the old Broadway play once said, “your arms [are] too short to box with God.” So, too, are our limited minds incapable of deciding what makes for a life worth preserving.