In 1977, Paul Simon released a song, “Slip Slidin Away.” It is a rather poignant song about love and people “slipin” away from each other. In a way it could describe the attitude of some Americans about their respect for life.
Most ancient cultures believed children were chattel and not persons. The ancient Greeks exposed unwanted children to the elements and left them to die of either malnutrition, weather or animals. All over ancient Europe and Asia, child sacrifice was practiced. Women in India threw their girl babies into the Ganges.
Laws caught up with the practice of infanticide, so in most countries it is illegal, but not in all, especially in those countries with birth restrictions. The killing of a child became a capital offense as far back as A.D. 374 in Rome. However, the practice did not stop. Up until the 12th century, Romans threw their unwanted babies into the Tiber River. In the mid-nineteenth century in the United Kingdom, if a mother killed her child, she was declared insane. Society has flip-flopped on the issue, admitting the moral depravity of the act of murdering an infant, and yet looking the other way.
The three main religions — Christianity, Judaism and Islam — have all condemned the practice. Abraham, considered the father of these faiths, attempted to sacrifice his only son to appease God. God intervened and supplied a ram for the sacrifice rather than the child. God was making a statement against child sacrifice thousands of years before the birth of Jesus.
So, here we are in our modern culture of today. The abortion ruling of Roe v. Wade has been the hot topic over and over in political races and votes on the floors of state legislatures and Congress. Basically, over the decades since its passage, the boundaries for a legal abortion have been stretched. Late-term abortions have now gone to the point of allowing for no protection for a child born alive in a botched late-term abortion. The reasoning is that the child won’t live outside the womb.
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta has statics that show otherwise. From 2003 to 2014, 143 children born alive after an abortion have lived. In 2017, Florida claimed 17 live births with survival; Arizona, 10; Minnesota, 3; and Oklahoma, 1.
On Feb. 27, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act failed in the U.S. Senate on a 53 to 44 vote. Doctors or health care personnel are now not required to do anything to keep a living child from dying if it is born after an abortion attempt. We are allowing people to do exactly what ancient primitive societies did when they put their babies in the forest to die. We are acting as God and deciding who lives or who dies.
When trade policies are being negotiated, there is a semblance of assuring that countries with poor human rights violations must make concessions for the deal to go through. We seem to act on the premise that we stand for the rights of all humanity. Our vote in the Senate this past month negates this assumption. As a government we are “slip slidin” away from the right of all citizens for protection under the law.
Our Church, which ought to be the voice of morality on this, as in many other life issues, is greatly weakened. The abuse of children by some priests and the consequent cover-ups by some bishops have rendered the Church’s voice mute in many places. The people of God must let their voices be heard. We must speak for those too small to even have a voice beyond those first weak cries of breath from lungs just learning to breathe.
It is ironic that the death penalty in the U.S. appears to be on its way out and infanticide by neglect is legal. “Choose life that you and your descendants may live.” (Deuteronomy)
Sister Patricia McCarthy currently teaches Math at a Catholic School. For many years she taught troubled children and victims of abuse.
