Part 1: Less Than Human?

RICHARD FREDERICKS, PH.D. | Former Adventist Pastor

The apostle John Wrote: “Dear children, let us not love simply with our words and tongues, but with our deeds and in truth” (1John 3:18); and Paul concurred that the goal of authentic Christianity is “love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5). 

The first two sections of this paper are analytical, but the third is evangelistic. Part one examines the ethical presuppositions that under gird abortion; the second portion offers a Biblical analysis of its morality and motivation.

The final section states my goal for this symposium, based on our common ground as Christians of desiring to be truly compassionate. It suggests the real question facing us is not what we should tell a woman in a crisis pregnancy to do, but what we should do for her. The real threat to happiness and self-worth for woman in crisis pregnancies is not their developing child; but isolation and fear caused by indifference and apathy, or hostility and rejection from those they should be able to turn to for love, forgiveness and for emotional, physical and financial support.

Part I: Less Than Human?

In 1973 a 7-2 Supreme Court decision (Roe vs. Wade) overturned the legislation of 48 states that prohibited or severely limited abortions except in life-threatening situations or rape. A simultaneous decision (Doe v. Bolton) made the “termination of the fetus” more simple by removing the need for medical review. A woman need only state that her unborn child was somehow detrimental to her “health” including her emotional health or simply her material or social well-being.¹

Basic to the quality of life ethic is the concept that all human beings do not necessarily have intrinsic value nor even equal value.

 In the United States today, one out of every four pregnancies end in abortion. In fourteen metropolitan areas such as Washington D.C., Atlanta and Seattle abortions outnumber live births.² Three abortions are done per minute, 4,200 abortions per day, 1.5 million per year—a total of more that 21 million since the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973. Since 1975 the ‘war on the unborn’ has produced twice as many casualties each year as have the combined deaths in all the major wars in U.S. history, from the Revolutionary War through Vietnam.

Less than 3% of all abortions are for serious defects, rape, incest or danger to the mother. In almost every case the abortion is done because someone perceived it would be an inconvenience: a social or financial hindrance to ‘personal happiness.’ The unborn are allowed no jury, defense or stay of execution by the law.

The mother’s womb is now the most dangerous place throughout one’s entire lifespan. The chance for a premeditated and fatal assault is never again as high. Simultaneously, abortion has made the medical profession, whose entire orientation was once geared toward preserving life, the nation’s foremost terminators of life.³

How Did We Get Here?

Is this a gross violation of the sixth commandment? If 97% of all abortions are performed for matters of personal convenience is this murder—the violent killing of innocent human life? The answer depends on how one views the “fetus?” The term itself  “fetus” is simply a Latin word that means ‘unborn child’. Is the fetus really a child, a member of the human family and thus deserving of protection? Or is it only tissue, a part of the woman’s body, whose sole right to survival is based on whether or not the mother feels she wants it?⁴

In their 1973 decision the Supreme Court justices gave their answer to this question by ruling that while the unborn are human, they are not persons. The fetus is only a “potential life” and therefore does not have legal right of protection. This understanding of the human fetus is rooted in the quality of life ethic.

Stated in its most simplistic and essential terms the quality of life ethic responds to modern social and economic problems by stating that some humans are a.) not really true “persons,” and b.) a great hindrance to a better lifestyle for individuals and society, thus c.) it is not wrong to kill them because it enhances (in an expedient and cost effective way) the quality of life for those who are true persons. Abortion is the first pragmatic illustration of this ethic in action. It is exhibit A, the tip of the iceberg.

Basic to the quality of life ethic is the concept that all human beings do not necessarily have intrinsic value nor even equal value. Indeed, many homo sapiens should not be seen as persons at all. Rather “personhood” is assigned according to various levels of physical and mental development. One must attain and then maintain these qualities in order to have a life worth living—or protecting. Simply put, personhood is based on achievement and unless a human achieves (and maintains) a certain level of intellectual or physical development he/she is not a person, and therefore is disposable if seen as a threat to a full person.

Abortion is the first application of this ethic. Its logic legitimizes further questions: “Are all post-fetal humans truly persons? If not, who are not? Who should decide?” The unborn, because they are at an early developmental stage, are denied personhood and placed in a free fire zone. They are dependent, non-productive, not able to defend themselves, and a potential economic burden. Why should other problematic humans be treated any different if they also fit into similar categories? In his widely used college textbook on ethics, Vincent Barry illustrates the dilemma well:

“What conditions should be used as the criteria of personhood? Can an entity [a human] be considered a person merely because it possesses certain biological properties? Or should other factors be introduced, such as consciousness, self-consciousness, rationality, and the capacities for communication and moral judgment?…For example, if we believe it is the capacity to think and reason that makes one human, we will likely associate the loss of personhood with the loss of rationality. If we consider consciousness as the defining characteristic, we will be more inclined to consider a person to have lost that status when a number of characteristics such as the capacities to remember, enjoy, worry, and will are gone…. This doesn’t mean that a death decision necessarily follows when an entity is determined to be a nonperson. But it does mean that whatever is inherently objectionable about allowing or causing a person to die dissolves, because the entity is no longer a person (emphasis supplied).”⁵

Recent developments demonstrate that this ethic has extended beyond the question of abortion. Euthanasia, the medically induced “good death” for those deemed no longer fit to live, has become more acceptable⁶ —and active euthanasia is increasingly practiced by members of the medical profession.⁷  And there already have been several instances of infanticide, cases in which newborns with some type of genetic deficiency were placed in a hospital nursery crib marked “Do Not Feed” and allowed to die of dehydration—a process that took six days in the case of Bloomington, Indiana’s “Baby Doe” in April 1982.⁸

All arguments that support this ethic recognize a hierarchical structuring of the value of individual humans based on relative worth. So, for example the mother’s happiness may be considered more important than the child’s life, or society’s financial well-being above even basic extended care of the terminally ill. This is a dramatic shift away from the Judeo-Christian view of human life as sacred which gave the preservation of innocent human life⁹ priority over any socio-economic consideration.

An article that appeared in the journal California Medicine three years before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion-on-demand illustrates the need to repudiate the old ethic based upon the sanctity of life in order to be comfortable with abortion:

“The process of eroding the old ethic and substituting the new has already begun. It may be seen most clearly in changing attitudes toward human abortion….Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The results have been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception, and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death….This schizophrenic subterfuge is necessary because while the new ethic is being accepted the old one has not been rejected.”¹⁰

Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent.

JOURNAL, CALIFORNIA MEDICINE

If personhood is based on capabilities or achievements, then who has the authority to draw the line between mere entities and genuine persons? What barrier will keep those in the next generation who hold power in society from expanding the category of nonpersons to include others whom they consider a threat to the general welfare of the state? The crucial point is that we have moved from an objective (all innocent human life is protected by law) to subjective (only those defined at this point in time as “persons” are legally protected) base in our legal-ethics. The door is open for the circle of “non-person humans” to expand.

The twenty-week old fetus of a drug addict father and a mentally distraught, economically deprived mother can be legally terminated to enhance the quality of life for those involved and society. Based on that reasoning why could not a totally dependant twenty-week old newborn in the same circumstances also be killed? Or a two-year old? There is no objective or logical basis to prohibit such a step. The only barrier against such an expansion in our present legal system is subjective opinion. If one believes in the fallen condition of humanity, this is terrifying.¹¹

Thus the quality of life ethic radically alters the moral mandate against murder. It is no longer a species-centered injunction against killing humans but a more selective prohibition against killing persons-as defined by society at any given moment. It allows society to adjust to the idea of solving social and economic problems by killing problem people. The two ethical arguments then become: who is worthy of life; and who decides?

Classifying humans as nonpersons.

The questions just raised are not idle ones. The 1973 abortion decision was not the first time that, based on economic considerations and the supposedly superior rights of others, the U.S. Supreme court ruled a certain class of humans to be nonpersons

In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case that the Black race was less than human and the property of the owner. To free a slave would violate the Fifth Amendment by causing an undue financial hardship to those who were truly human [White slave owners]. Listen to the precise reasoning of  Chief Justice Taney (himself a slave owner):

“They [Blacks] have for more than a century been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his own benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it (emphasis supplied).”¹²

This also was a “pro-choice” decision, in this case the choice of the slave owner that enabled one human to treat another as personal property to be kept or disposed of at will—especially if a profit could be made. Like the unborn children of the late 20th century, Black men, women and children in the 19th century were denied the rights and protection that come with personhood. The basis of that tragic decision was a narrow view of humanity that arbitrarily limited personhood to a particular skin color.¹³

This century contains a more direct analogy to America’s increasing implementation of death-laws as solutions to social and economic problems. That analogy began in the Weimer German Republic (1919-33) and climaxed the Nazi Third Reich (1933-45). Death as a solution gradually culminated in Hitler’s “Final Solution” in which the Jews (a religious group) were declared nonpersons, an unacceptable burden and threat to society. The result was the Holocaust, the extermination [termination] of 6,000,000 Jews.

Most people today know about Hitler’s Final Solution, but few know its ethical and medical precedents. In 1920 Felix Meiner published a small volume in Leipzig, Germany titled: The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value that paved the way for the physicians of Germany to become the directors of the Nazi killing program. In this volume German psychiatrist Alfred Hoche and lawyer Karl Binding declared the Hippocratic oath obsolete, denied that there is an absolute right to life, and decried the ‘wasted manpower, patience and capital investment’ needed to ‘keep life not worth living alive.’ Hoche and Binding forcefully argued that the terminally ill, the unproductive, the feeble minded, and all ‘useless eaters’ have the ‘right to the complete relief of an unbearable life’ and should be ‘given a death with dignity.’”¹⁴

At the same time German schoolchildren were taught the Hegelian principle: “whatever is useful is right.” Mathematics problems were given in which they were asked to figure the costs of supporting “useless” old people versus building housing for productive newlyweds. They were taught that the handicapped represented an obstacle to their economic prosperity. Killing the ‘useless’ for financial reasons became acceptable moral reasoning. Before the first Jews entered the gas chambers, the “Charitable Transport Company for the Sick” carried 250,000 German citizens deemed “unfit to live” to places where they were given “good deaths.” Among those no longer fit to live were World War I veterans who were amputees, the incontinent elderly, and Gypsies.¹⁵

Finally the Nuremburg Race Laws declared Jews, Gypsies and “half-breeds” (children who were part Jewish by heritage) had lost all rights to legal protection because they were “partial Germans” who were “less than human.” Their extinction was called an economic “strengthening of the State” through the “cleansing of the race.”

At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, psychiatrist Dr. Leo Alexander demonstrated that the people who participated and condoned the atrocities of those two decades were not demented monsters. They were very ordinary people who chose to remain silent rather that risk loosing their own prosperity, popularity or positions. The majority of Christians in Germany continued to attend church regularly but remained silent. Silent!¹⁶

Adventist Involvement: A Personal Analysis

The Adventist role in this drama is what moved me from apathy to involvement. In Adventist hospitals where abortions are done the overwhelming percentage are elective abortions (no defect in the child or danger to the life of the mother); a practice allowed for under #5 of the Church’s official guidelines. I soon realized there would not be a pro-life or a pro-choice movement if the abortion question actually centered around the tiny fraction of abortions involving rape, severe mental retardation or danger to the mother. The real issue is two views of human value.

In Adventist hospitals where abortions are done the overwhelming percentage are elective abortions (no defect in the child or danger to the life of the mother); a practice allowed for under #5 of the Church’s official guidelines.

Next I saw pictures—real pictures of what happens in an abortion. What was being torn apart by a suction curette 10-13 weeks into a pregnancy is not a “blob” or “unwanted tissue” but a child with perfectly formed little arms, hands, fingers and even fingernails; feet with toes and toenails; faces with eyes and expression; a brain that had already emitted strong brainwaves for a month before the “termination.” I was looking at a human being with potential, and not at potential life.

Then a young female Adventist pediatrician told me of a late saline abortion in an Adventist hospital in which the abortion failed. The baby was born alive and crying, but placed in a sealed bucket to suffocate. She was horrified by such an act of murder. Beyond the initial horror she was stunned on two accounts: first, during her own training she had stated she would withdraw from medical school (University of Virginia) rather than perform or participate in an abortion due to her religious convictions as an Adventist. After first saying she must assist in an abortion to graduate the University backed down. She assumed as a church we took a strong stand against abortion. Then she found that abortions for convenience (non-medical emergencies) were regular occurrences in Adventist hospitals. I will never forget her tears as she looked at me and said: “How can we do this?”

And I met Patti McKinney, the President of the fastest growing organization in America: WEBA (Women Exploited by Abortion). Starting five years ago with two members, it currently has 36,000 members with chapters in 30 states, Patti introduced me to the “women’s issue” in abortion from another angle—the incredible sense of betrayal and the equally tremendous physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional scars left with many who choose to abort.¹⁷

Meeting Patti had an impact on me for another reason. This courageous lady, who appears regularly on national television, was at one time a member of our church. She left us because she believed we were not serious about our call to keep all the commandments of God. Her question was: “OK Adventists, what about the sixth commandment?”

…a young female Adventist pediatrician told me of a late saline abortion in an Adventist hospital in which the abortion failed. The baby was born alive and crying, but placed in a sealed bucket to suffocate.

Next to basic apathy (“I don’t want to get involved” or “If the church is neutral so am I.”) the predominant response I have found among Adventist, especially clergy, is a denial that the Scriptural principals have anything to say concerning this issue. Because no proof-text against abortion can be found, it is argued, the Bible is neutral or, at best, non-definitive. This, to me, is a view that discredits Scripture and God Himself. Is God indifferent to the reality of America’s 22,000,000 abortions in fifteen years—the tip of the iceberg in terms of handling economic threats and social inequality by death. Has He really left everyone to “do what is right in his own eyes”?

If so, society and the church are left with a diminished view of humanity in which only those who are truly “persons”—as defined by society at any given moment—have a legal and moral right to life. The only barrier against killing humans for reasons of socio-economic expediency becomes nothing more than the subjective opinion of society or its power-elite; and history indicates that if social and economic pressures become severe enough, such a self-serving barrier will quickly give way to a quiet holocaust with the medical profession taking the lead.†

In part 2 of this article, presented in the next issue of Proclamation!, we will shift from a review of the ethical source for abortion to a biblical analysis of that ethic, and offer a suggested model for an authentic Christian response.

Footnotes

1. See Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179, 192 (1973). These decisions came too late to terminate “Jane Roe’s” pregnancy, and today her child (whom she gave up for adoption) is an eighteen year old teenager.
2. Documentation for these statistics is given in Curt Young: The Least of These, (Chicago, Moody Press; 1984); p.30.
3. The Hippocratic Oath, which appeared for centuries on physicians’ degrees calls on the doctor to never cross the line and become executioner upon penalty of divine curse, specifically stating: “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give a woman an abortive aid. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and art.” This is a far cry from Edward C. Allred who was trained at Loma Linda University. Allred decided to go into medicine instead of law because of his “fundamentalist Seventh-day Adventist background.” He is the largest provider of abortions in the state of California, running ten clinics that do nothing else. Allred was quoted in the San Diego Union (October 12, 1980) as stating he has personally terminated over 50,000 unborn children.
4. With 3 million couples longing for a child to adopt, the phrase “unwanted child” is, in the truest sense, a misnomer.
5. Vincent Barry, Applying Ethics: A Text with Readings; 2nd ed., (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 198): pp. 189-190. Look carefully at the options Barry suggests for deciding when a human becomes a nonperson [an entity], and therefore can be exterminated without moral objection. Among the criteria are inadequate moral judgment [based on whose criteria of morality?]; irrationality [based on what definition of rationality—Jesus was declared insane repeatedly by the most educated religious leaders of His day]; or even the loss of the capacity to worry (ponder Matthew 6:24-31 in this light.) The bottom line is one human deciding another is not worthy of life. The line of death is not fixed by any infallible or unchanging objective standards.
6. In March, 1986 the American Medical Association’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs ruled that it is “not unethical” to selectively kill patients who are in comas judged irreversible by withholding all food and water even when death is not imminent. The bottom line again was economic – the rising cost of caring for such individuals. Dr. Nancy Dickey, the chairman of the AMA Council said the judgment of which patients were deemed irreversible would be left up to the individual doctors: “there will be no checklists.”
7. See “The Doctor Decided on Death,” Time, February 15, 1988.
8. During those six days ten couples came forward and offered to adopt the child, knowing that the majority of Down’s Syndrom children are not massively (and often not even moderately) retarded. A few days after Baby Doe died Joseph Sobran in his syndicated Los Angeles Times column (April 20, 1982) declared that “opposition to infanticide will soon be deplored as the dogma of a few religious sects who want to impose their views on everyone else.” The State of California currently is considering ratification of a bill, which will require all pregnant women to have a test done to determine if their child had Down’s Syndrome or Spina-bifida. If either situation is present they will be required to go into counseling emphasizing the trouble and cost to raise such children and offered State’s assistance if they decide for the option of abortion. Spina-bifida children are not usually mentally retarded. They are crippled. But now their personhood is a matter of debate. Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, speaking to a group of lawyers on the rising cost of caring for the elderly declared the terminally ill had a “duty to die,” and posed the question concerning mentally retarded children: “In a world of limited resources does it make sense to spend $10,000 a year educating a (mentally retarded) child to roll over.” (Reported in National Right to Life News, vol. 11, no. 7: April 19, 1984: p.1.) Virginia Abernathy, a psychiatrist at Vanderbuilt University’s School of Medicine advocates that an individual becomes a person only when he or she becomes a responsible moral agent—around age three or four. Until then, infants and defective children, like fetuses, are non-persons. Their only claim upon persons is compassion, they do not possess a moral right to life. Simply put she is seriously advocating that parents be allowed to make a check list of required qualifications in a child, and should be permitted to dispose of any infant or young child (non-person) who fails to measure up.
9. The term “innocent” is used for accuracy to qualify this statement. Arguments for capital punishment and “just war” can be derived from Scripture, but no such argument can be derived favoring the killing of an innocent human to enhance the quality of life of another human. As discussed in part II of this article, such an argument denies the biblical doctrine of one all-sufficient divine atonement.
10. California Medicine 113, no.3 (September, 1970): 67-68.
11. In the Roe vs. Wade decision, the Supreme Court justices did not support their reasoning with scientific evidence, but rested it on a particular value judgment about humanity. Even today, a decade after Roe vs. Wade, when one speaks in purely scientific terms it is taken as a biological fact that the fetus is alive, human and unique—a developing human being. “If anyone seriously doubts that,” says Richard McCormick of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, “they need only wait 266 days (from conception to birth) and see what they get.” (Quoted from Newsweek; January 14, 1985: p. 29.) In 1981 a U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Separation of Powers addresses the specific question of when human life begins and listened to twenty-two expert witnesses (geneticists, biologists, medical researchers) who were evenly divided on their views of abortion. They reported: “No witness raised any evidence to refute the biological fact that from the moment of human conception there exists a distinct individual being who is alive and is of the human species.” US Congress, Senate, Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, Reports to Committee on the Judiciary Regarding the Human Life Bill-S. 158, 97th  Congress, 1st Sess., p. 11-12, 18. The Supreme Court justices in 1973 assigned the unborn the euphemistic term “potential life.” To avoid the idea that in an abortion a human life was being destroyed the justices spoke of “terminating a pregnancy,” though medically a normal pregnancy terminates naturally in nine months while abortion exterminates life. Henceforth State laws could only “consider” offering legal protection for a “potential life” when it reached the point of “viability” (arbitrarily assigned to be 24 weeks). In 1973, 24 weeks was the earliest most physicians thought the child could live outside the womb if born prematurely. Since then babies born as early as 21 weeks have lived. In June of 1986 the Supreme Court denied States the right to even “consider offering” legal help to the unborn by striking down a Pennsylvania Law that required a woman considering abortion to be informed of the gestational age and developmental level of the fetus and the availability of other options such as adoption. Their reasoning was that the woman might be “intimidated.” See also Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S.; p. 163, see also pp. 113, 116, and 152.
12. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 at 404-407
13. For a detailed and documented treatment of the Dred Scott decision, see: Curt Young, The Least of These; pp. 1-20.
14. Gary Bergle, “The Never Again is Happening Now,” (“People of Destiny,” September/October, 1984): p. 12; quoting from Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche: The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value, English Reprint; (Santa Ana, CA: Robert Sassone; 1975): p.76. For a far more complete treatment of the involvement and mindset of the medical profession in Hitler’s extermination program see: Robert Jay Lifton; The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, (Basic Books, 1986).
15. John Powell, Abortion, The Silent Holocaust, (Allen, Texas; Argus Communications, 1981): pp. 30-39; see also Gary Bergle, “The Never Again is Happening Now,” p. 1.
16. Language propaganda was used in Germany. Jews became “bacteria.” The vans that carried the people to their deaths were dubbed “the Charitable Transport Society.” The killing centers were called “medical experimentation centers.” This language propaganda has analogies to American’s abortion industry as well, as Jean Staker Garton, a former abortion activist writes in her book: “Who Broke the Baby?” She tells how counselors were taught to describe the baby as “inter-uterine tissue” or “the blob” but never the baby. The “rights of the woman” and her “freedom to choose” were to be stressed, and childless couples were praised as “child free” at abortion clinics dubbed “centers for reproductive health.” To further remove the idea of killing, verbal descriptions have become increasingly vague, until now most abortion literature refers to the “interruption of a pregnancy.” This is a classic euphemism—couching a horrible reality in comfortable words. First it was “termination of the pregnancy” which of course really meant extermination of the developing child. But now we are only “interrupting” the pregnancy. Imagine saying to a history class: “Lee Harvey Oswald interrupted John F. Kennedy’s Presidency.” This type of verbal conditioning in favor of abortion is blatant in a paper prepared for the Planned Parenthood Physician’s Association by Dr. Willard Cates: “Abortion as a Treatment of Unwanted Pregnancy: The Number Two Sexually Transmitted Disease.” Here the fetus is not even given the status “potential life,” but is identified as a “disease.” (Paper presented November 11-12, 1976; Planned Parenthood Convention, Miami Beach, Florida.)
17. WEBA is not alone in this type of ministry. There are numerous organizations at the grass roots level for women suffering from what is medically termed: “post-abortion syndrome” (PAS). Also at the national level is American Victims of Abortions (AVA), founded and directed by Dr. Olivia Gans. This organization seeks to help and educate the public concerning the physical, psychological and emotional effects abortion has, not only on women, but also on the fathers, siblings, grandparents and other significant people. Research into PAS indicates frequent aftereffects such as marital dysfunction, job dysfunction, sleep disorders, eating disorders, substance abuse and chronic depression. I personally have had six women come to me after their abortions who are experiencing severe emotional and, in several cases physical aftereffects.

—Republished from Proclamation!, January/February, 2003.