Explicitly denying personhood to a human being, upon whom neonatal surgeons are performing medical procedures, who have human DNA, who were conceived by humans, who gestate within a human mother, who are otherwise treated as humans medically is simply bizarre. Our knowledge of human development has never been greater or clearer. The viability of infants who are born prematurely has never been greater.
The flood of bad news easily overwhelms us these days. Some of us are old enough to remember when we did not know who was doing what to whom in Iceland right at the moment but we live in a world when we know these things now. In North America, we live in an upside-down world in which acts and relationships that were illegal only a few years ago are now not only legal but those who do them demand that we not only tolerate them but approve of them. Most recently, the State of New York amended its abortion laws to permit abortions by a “health care practitioner licensed, certified, or authorized under title eight” to abort the life of an infant up to “twenty-four weeks from the commencement of the pregnancy” or when the infant is no longer viable or when the abortion is “necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.” The legislature also repealed legal protections for infants after twenty-four weeks of gestation. It is no longer a homicide to abort an infant up to the point of delivery. The new law is explicit that infants in utero are not considered legal persons. This is a remarkable revision of New York law because it comes after and in light of contemporary medical technology that allows physicians to see infants in utero in remarkable detail and to perform surgery on them in utero before twenty-four weeks.
Explicitly denying personhood to a human being, upon whom neonatal surgeons are performing medical procedures, who have human DNA, who were conceived by humans, who gestate within a human mother, who are otherwise treated as humans medically is simply bizarre. Our knowledge of human development has never been greater or clearer. The viability of infants who are born prematurely has never been greater. On March 14, 2018 Cullen was born in Alabama at twenty-two weeks. He was just over 13oz. He went home in August. In Alabama, Cullen is regarded as a human being. In New York law he is not and subject to abortion under the deliberately broad and vague “health” exception. This law and the celebration surrounding its signing puts one in mind of the language used by the Apostle Paul about the pagans of the ancient world.
17Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20But that is not the way you learned Christ! (Eph 4:17-20; ESV)
