A Pro-Choice Activist Spent Two Days as a Pro-Life Activist, Part I [Clinton Wilcox]

Pro-Choice journalist Robin Marty was invited to the Walk for Life in Washington, D.C. by Jill Stanek to see what it is pro-life people do at these events. She wasn't infiltrating; she wasn't pretending to be pro-life to deceive people and "collect dirt" on pro-life people. She was openly pro-choice at this event using this as a way to gather information about pro-life people in their element. I personally think she was very brave for doing this. If pro-life people would do the same, they might realize pro-choice people are people, too, not demons.

I've never been to the Walk for Life in DC. It may not be feasible until such time as I find a rich pro-life benefactor (or get hired to speak there). However, I did attend the Walk in San Francisco. Follow this link if you'd like to read my brief thoughts on that event. Now I'd like to offer my thoughts on some of the things Marty mentioned in her article.

Day 1

Almost right away, I noticed her (near) repetition with the term "safe, legal abortion access" (as in, pro-lifers oppose safe, legal abortion access). This is merely a rhetorical jab, as it indicates that pro-life people don't want women safe. We do, of course, want women safe. However, no woman is being forced to undergo an abortion (even a dangerous one). Since abortion is an immoral act which kills an innocent human being, this phrases confuses what is essential in the abortion issue. Thankfully she only used the phrase twice (I was afraid she'd continue to use it throughout the article to poison the well against pro-life people).

She first mentioned attending a protest outside of an abortion clinic with Father Frank Pavone and a group of pro-life activists. At the event, one Rev. Patrick Mahoney was trying to get himself arrested by violating a pro-life buffer zone law they have in the city. He actually seemed to look forward to getting arrested. Troy Newman of Operation Rescue indicated he'd love to get arrested, but he had a prior commitment.

Now, as a pro-life activist I am willing to get arrested if need be as a way to protest these laws and raise awareness of the bias against pro-life activism. However, I do not want it to happen, nor would I wish it to happen. I'm too soft to survive in jail, and I would probably let my kidneys burst before using the toilet in front of guys named Biff and Anaconda. These guys are a lot braver than I am.

There are parts of her article we can point to in order to show what not to do when you talk to pro-choice people. For example, when Marty was introduced to Newman, he asked her how she felt about having the blood of Tonya Reeves on her hands and the hands of her entire movement. However, I don't believe this to be a good statement to start off a conversation with a pro-choice person with. For one thing, she doesn't have Tonya Reeves' blood on her hands, nor does the movement. If abortion was illegal, Reeves may have still pursued an abortion anyway. Additionally, even though it is now legal, Robin Marty did not force Reeves to have an abortion. So while this may be a nice rhetorical trick, it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. It's just mean-spirited. While we want to convince people the pro-life position is true, we should aim to win the person above winning the argument (because even if you win the person without winning the argument, you've allowed her to see that pro-life people can be reasonable, which may lead her to taking pro-life people more seriously in the future and being more open to their arguments).

At any rate, Mahoney ended up not getting arrested, and Marty came to realize that pro-life people do care (at least "a little") for children after they are born.

Next she attended a die-in (something I've never been a participant in), and then to the hotel. She was struck by how many young people were in attendance at the event (she says the young people outnumbered adults 10 to 1). As I have been involved in the pro-life movement for about five years now, training high school and college students (and some older folks), I don't think I've had just an idea of how numerous the young people in the movement really are. But then again, the attendance at the DC Walk for Life always dwarfs the attendance at the San Francisco one, even with the San Francisco Walk bringing in a few tens of thousands of people. Marty really got a feel for just how young the majority of the pro-life movement is now.

Marty talked a bit about the "pro-life counterculture" that is developing, with everything from pro-life shirts to movies being made as an alternative to the mainstream. As a musician, myself, who is a Christian, I've become heavily disillusioned by the "Christian Contemporary Music" industry. For one thing, they can be just as secular as the secular counterparts, but you can't just slap Jesus on something and expect it to be good. By having this idea that we need to set ourselves apart, we've allowed the secular mainstream to put Christian artists in a box where non-Christians can be sure to steer away from. I prefer the idea that C.S. Lewis shared, that "what we want are not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects -- with their Christianity latent" (from "Christian Apologetics"). We should be writing art, literature, etc., to the best of our abilities. As Christians who recognize we are made in the image of a creative God, we should be producing the best products out there. Not specifically Christian products, but products that are a natural outpouring of our faith. Our music is not inherently better just because we say Jesus in every chorus. We don't need more art that is stuck in a box, appealing to a small subset of the population.

Jill Stanek and John Jakubczyk (don't even think about asking me how to pronounce that), a lawyer from Arizona, told her that they wanted to get into the mainstream, rather than creating a counterculture, using Frank Capra's movies as examples (It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington).

It's amazing what interacting with people on a personal level can do toward your hostility toward them (as we often have difficulty separating a worldview from the adherent). But on the car ride to Irish pub The Dubliner, she exchanged baby photos with Matt Yonke. She mentioned that the rest of the car tried to process the fact that the 20-week fetal-pain abortion bill was rejected (while making a dubious claim about fetal pain being rejected by many mainstream groups, though it is based on solid scientific evidence), due to some GOP members having a problem with the reporting requirements for rape victims. So the pro-life leaders who were gathered put together a sit-in inside Rep. Renee Ellmers' office (though she skipped town to avoid just such an event).

Marty finished off the first day with discussions with pro-life leaders (the "conversion portion," as she was jokingly referring it to). One person in particular is very sincere, and his work in the movement is important. But we pro-life advocates need to have a discussion regarding the best way to ask questions. Is it best to ask "why were you not instilled with values growing up" or are there other ways of approaching this? Atheists can have values. The argument is not that atheists can't be good people or lead (relatively) good lives. The argument is that atheism as a worldview can't ground morality. When we say you can't be good without God, we don't mean that a lack of belief in God will necessarily lead to immoral lives (though it can), the argument is that without God there is no way to distinguish a good life from a bad life, or a good act from a bad act. You must have an objective standard of morality for that. Accusing atheists of having no values is ridiculous and makes it more difficult to have any hope of convincing people of the truth of Christianity.

I'll conclude with my thoughts on her second day at the Walk next time.

(Edit: Changed two paragraphs slightly.)

On Arguing Well and the Mistakes of Doc Holliday [Jay Watts]

Years ago, I sat down to lunch with a young man responsible for getting me around his university. I was set to speak there for the next two days, one training event and an event interacting with the student body to model respectful discourse. He told me that he was a philosophy major and passionately pro-life. The more he relayed to me the past events this campus group had organized the more a common theme emerged. This young man didn't argue for the pro-life position. He fought for it, or more to the point, he fought about abortion with anyone willing to engage him.

When I pressed him on the wisdom of adding personal vitriol to an already contentious debate he shrugged and simply responded, “I'm not convinced that I need to be nice to people on this issue. I'm just not worried about offending people.”

I replied, “OK, but are you at least convinced you need to be effective at helping people to change their minds? Because I'm not convinced that adding to the offense of our message with personal rancor is helpful to that end.”

I've talked to many people like that young man, people that see cordiality and respectful dialogue as weakness. These people are passionate defenders of the value of human life that are tired of hearing the same arguments over and over used to justify what they are certain is the destruction of innocent human life on an incomprehensible scale. On the face of things, I fully understand their position. We argue that tens of millions of innocent human lives are being destroyed worldwide every year through the practice of elective abortion. It is absurd for people like me to ask for civility in the face of that. The other side certainly isn't wringing their hands over incivility, so why should we?

I routinely tell audiences that we should have a threefold strategy: simplify the issue by focusing on the question “What are the unborn?”, argue persuasively using the science of embryology to establish the identity of the unborn and philosophy to establish the value of their lives, and to argue in a manner that honors both Christ and the central premise of our argument that all human life is endowed with equal dignity. The final point should not be seen as subordinate to the others. It is vital to reaching those who disagree with us.

Our goal isn't simply to win arguments, but to win people through effective arguing. People like the young man that I once was. As a hard living, profanity using, nihilistic atheist, I was ready and willing to throw down with anyone on any point and eager for the argument to get heated. I am a Watts, for crying out loud. My family raised me on emotionally bitter and hateful arguments. As Doc Holliday said in Tombstone, that is just my game.

Speaking of Doc Holliday, I recently read Casey Tefertiller's Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend. At the point of the narrative that Doc Holliday befriends Wyatt Earp, Tefertiller quotes several different sources on the disposition of my fellow Georgian. The general consensus on the good dentist seems to be that he was the most quarrelsome, argumentative, and troublemaking fellow that most people had ever met. His desire to argue and fight constantly got him into trouble. That is what everyone who knew the man said. Lawman Bat Masterson includes a small additional detail that adds something fascinating:

“Holliday seemed to be absolutely unable to keep out of trouble for any great length of time. He would no sooner be out of one scrape before he was in another, and the strange part of it is that he was more often in the right than in the wrong, which was rarely the case with a man who is continually getting himself into trouble.”

Everyone remembers that Holliday quarreled constantly, but only Bat Masterson seems to remember that he was most often right in his positions or reasons for quarreling. All that anyone else remembers is his legendary hostility.

I believe that the same is true when we engage people and match them in their emotion. I have been in the middle of some monumentally silly arguments where my dislike for the person in front of me fueled me to be willing to argue to my dying day rather than admit they were right about anything. I can't recall a single point they made after the fact, or even why I ever cared to argue in the first place. All I remembered is that I didn't like that person. I can't even guess how many people out there have only terrible memories of me in that regard. We are unlikely to be able to help anyone that holds an incorrect view to correct that view by becoming the worst versions of ourselves during the discussion.

Also, like the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the pro-life message naturally carries its own offense. Our message is that the unborn are human just like the rest of us. As such, we have the same basic obligations and duties to them that we do to all valuable life not the least of which is to simply refrain from killing them.

One young woman at a university recently staked out a relativistic position in our conversation. Abortion was wrong for her but not necessarily for others. After a while she admitted that a couple of weeks prior to our discussion she had driven her best friend to get an abortion. This argument, no matter how respectful, was more than an argument about science and philosophy. My position judged her friend, as well as her own participation in her friend's actions. She loves her best friend, and yet the conclusion of my argument is that her best friend paid for the destruction of her offspring. If my arguments were correct, she helped her friend to do something terrible.

We offer a message that abortion is a terrible injustice in our world. We argue that our community legalized the killing of the next generation because we find their presence inconvenient or ill-timed. We are ending the lives of our offspring because we can't imagine how we can continue our current lifestyle with them around. In rare cases, women reach out to abortionists to destroy nascent human life because something terrible happened to those women and they are convinced that if they allow that life to mature it will remind them of that terrible thing. They fear that the worst event of their lives will continue to physically echo through their pregnancy and believe that destroying that life is an act of freedom and healing. Our arguments don't need us to amplify their offense in any of these cases. They call for a spirit of grace.

One of the things that most amazed me about Jesus when I first began to study him was how he was utterly unlike the world in which I was raised. All of my life I learned to glorify vengeance and the strength to make things right. Pay back was a... well, you get the picture. All of the sudden I was confronted with a man so strong that he refused to allow the world to make him in its image. The more the world hated him, the more he responded with grace and sacrifice. He was strong enough to be true to who he was and not be crafted by the events in his life. It was a strength that I could only understand to be beyond human; something otherworldly and unique.

It is in his name that I argue. It is in his name that stand up for the dignity of all human life. I must discipline myself to do so in a manner that honors Jesus. I am also convinced that doing so is the best way to reach people for whom anger and passion come easily but for whom grace and love may be an altogether alien concept.

Reflections on the Walk for Life [Clinton Wilcox]

Saturday, January the 24th, I attended the West Coast Walk for Life with more than 30,000 other pro-life people (and about a few dozen pro-choice protesters) in San Francisco, CA.

From left to right: Me (LTI), Josh Brahm (ERI),
Nick Neal (LMJ), Ellen Snyder, Monica
and Adam Jackson, and Terrisa Lopez (SPL)

I got to meet up with representatives from Secular Pro-Life, whom I only get to see once or twice a year, as well as representatives from Life Matters Journal, and Josh Brahm of Equal Rights Institute. I wasn't particularly impressed with their line-up of speakers, so I didn't listen in (and unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay until Sunday to attend the Students for Life conference).

The Walk this year was an interspecies
affair (thanks to Terrisa for that
observation)

There is a bit of danger that I try to bring to remembrance with the Walk. It's entirely possible (and easy) for a pro-life person to attend the Walk and feel like they've done their "pro-life duty" for the year. It's important that we not do this. The Walk is a good thing to show just how formidable the pro-life movement is. But it should not stop here. If anything, being so early in the year, you should use this as your jumping-off point to get your year of pro-life activism started. We can attend the Walk to get energized and meet up with our pro-life friends, but if we really want abortion to become illegal again, it takes all the effort of everyone in the pro-life field working tirelessly to educate people about abortion, from the grassroots to those in the political arena.

Keep it classy, folks. Image courtesty
of Secular Pro-Life

Most of the protesters there had signs that were standard pro-choice arguments (e.g. "My body, my choice"). But there's one protester that I'd like to draw attention to. This was one protester who seemed like he believed all children should die. Now, I hestitate to believe that someone could really feel this way. I initially thought that he was trolling, trying to annoy pro-life people. But then I started thinking that I am aware of a small movement called anti-natalists, in which they believe it is immoral to reproduce (though some, like David Benatar, would say we have a moral obligation to abortion before a child "becomes a person", but that we don't have the right to kill someone afterward). However, Mark Bauerlein at First Things did a Google search on one of this protester's slogans ("Save the earth, don't give birth!"), and discovered that he may have belonged to the Environmentalism movement, not the pro-choice movement, itself. Either way, I would hope he's not legitimately pro-choice. It seems that whatever you think of pro-life people, if you want to really convince the public that you care about women (and children), you shouldn't make for yourself a protest sign that makes you look psychotic. That's counterproductive.

At any rate, the new year has begun, and there are a lot of things we can all do for the movement writ large. Let's keep our minds focused and our eyes looking straight ahead so that we can continue to work to make abortion unthinkable in our country.

Reflections on '...as long as it's healthy.'

This post was originally blogged at the Failed Atheist.

There is a common saying popular in Western culture when talking about the birth or scheduled scan of a child. It can arise in a number of different contexts but usually amounts to something like ‘…as long as it’s healthy’.

What does this mean? I don’t think people necessarily mean it in some sinister eugenic sense but what it means is that their child we be loved only if they are healthy. It places a condition on whether that child will be welcomed into the world and loved. I’ve heard it from so many people that it seems accurate to state that it’s culturally ingrained in our subconscious view of  the unborn child. A healthy child is a welcomed child whilst an unhealthy child is not, after-all in a culture of cost-benefit analysis an unhealthy child will just drain our resources right?

What’s wrong with ‘…as long as it’s healthy’? I can think of a number of reasons why we should stop saying it. There is nothing wrong in preferring a healthy child, I think most people can agree that we would prefer that our child was healthy than not. But that sentiment is not being portrayed in the saying, it goes much further than that by implying that an unhealthy child potentially won’t be loved by their parents and may be better off not being born. A parents love is meant to be unconditional but we have such a low cultural view of disability and poor health that it encourages our love for such children to be tentative and conditional. There is subtle yet pervasive pressure to only bring a healthy child into the world, this is why we have the scale of prenatal screening and diagnosis that we do, it is simply cheaper to diagnose and dispose of an unhealthy child before they’re born. Infanticide is still frowned upon here (for now), unlike the Netherlands and their Groningen protocol.

This is not a normal way to view ones children but part of a dehumanizing culture that has made an idol out of health and well being. We have trouble understanding that someone who may be in poor health or have a disability can be happy, our assumption is that those things equal a sub-par human existence which is not necessarily true. You do not need to be a healthy human being to be a good, influential or heroic one, just check out these people, Stephen Hawking, Hellen Keller, Jean-Dominique Bauby and Christy Brown as just a few examples of this.

To unconditionally love someone is to say that it’s good they exist. A humans dignity isn’t based in their talents and abilities but in their shared human nature. This is the Christian view of human value, we all share equal dignity grounded in being made in the image of God, and not because of how intelligent or physically able we may be. We should thus welcome all human beings into the world we share together, regardless of their health or abilities. When we keep repeating statements like ‘as long as it’s healthy’ we are partaking in an idea that implicitly intends not to welcome certain human beings into the world. Of course I understand that caring for a child who isn’t healthy may be challenging but we can make it easier by creating a culture where all humans are welcome and not only those who meets societal standards of normalcy. I therefore suggest that we stop saying ‘…as long as it’s healthy.’.

After writing this I discovered other people have also written about this, both from a Secular and Christian perspective, both very helpful for further reading.

Monkeying Around With Personhood [Clinton Wilcox]

Wesley J. Smith has written about a case in Argentina in which an orangutan named Sandra has been declared by the court to be a non-human person. This ruling essentially would grant Sandra her freedom because it is unethical to hold people captive unlawfully.

The BBC has even written about litigation in the United States to try to get Tommy, a chimpanzee living in captivity, recognized as a "legal person."

Peter Singer and Michael Tooley are two atheist philosophers who have long supported this notion that certain animals, like chimpanzees and dolphins, ought to be considered persons and human infants, embryos, fetuses, and the severely disabled ought not to be. Now it seems that fight has gotten bigger, even being won in at least one part of the world.

This line of thinking is atheist at its heart. If we are just the product of random mutations, a blind, naturalistic process of evolution, then really we are no more special than any other animal species out there. [1] This isn't just my interpretation, either. In Matter and Consciousness, Paul Churchland wrote: "The important point about the standard evolutionary story is that the human species and all of its features are the wholly physical outcome of a purely physical process...We are creatures of matter. We should learn to live with that fact."

In fact, Singer and Tooley both (in Practical Ethics and Abortion and Infanticide, respectively) have argued that this idea that humans are intrinsically valuable is a religious idea, and we need to do away with these "antiquated" notions. The only reason we now view infanticide as wrong is because Christian morality has permeated Western civilization.

So if you are going to argue that certain animals deserve personhood, one of two things must happen:

1) You raise those animals to the status of human beings. So if Tommy and Sandra are persons, and infants are not, that means that killing a chimpanzee is more serious than killing a human infant. If you "murder" a chimpanzee, you deserve to be locked away in jail for life or executed. [2] If you kill an infant, you don't. At most, you would be guilty of a property crime, if you killed the infant against the parents' wishes. This is a highly counterintuitive idea.

2) You lower humans to the status of mere animals. After all, if we're no intrinsically different than animals, then it's really not seriously wrong to kill another human being. This is also highly counterintuitive, since we have very strong intuition that killing any human being, especially ones that are younger and more vulnerable than we are, is seriously wrong.

The bottom line is chimpanzees don't deserve personhood status. Personhood is not some arbitrary idea that we can just ascribe to entities and consider them "one of us." Being a person is inherent in being the kind of entity that you are (in our case, a human being made in God's image, or to state it in a secular way, an entity with an inherent nature as rational agents). Those who believe you are a person based on the functions you currently perform are guilty of a simple confusion: confusing being a person with acting as a person. As you must be a human before you can develop human parts, so you must be a person before you can develop personal properties.

I do not believe that animals are rights bearing entities. That's not to say that we can mistreat them. They are still entities that feel pain, and we should respect that. And a human being who mistreats an animal is at risk of becoming animal-like, themselves, becoming desensitized to pain in others. However, even if you believe they are rights bearing entities, you can ascribe rights to them without ascribing personhood to them. But what we also have to understand is that with rights comes duties. I have a right to live. This means that I am also obligated to respect everyone else's right to live. Apes cannot understand or abide by any obligations.

Sandra and Tommy are both blissfully unaware of these court proceedings. In fact, they don't care one iota about whether or not you consider them persons. This is an important difference between apes and humans. Apes may be highly intelligent -- but only when compared to other animal species (this is often lost in the animal rights debate). Apes are not very intelligent when compared to human beings. No ape will ever write like Tolstoy, or paint like Michelangelo, or compose music like Bach, or fly other apes to the Moon. And while apes may be able to use certain rudimentary tools -- that's all it is, a rudimentary tool. No ape will ever open a hardware store for the carpentry needs of other apes. And while infants may not yet be able to understand these rights and obligations, they will. And that's the crux of the matter. Human embryos/fetuses/infants will naturally develop these abilities, whereas apes never will.

So trying to ascribe personhood status to lower animals is unnecessary and makes a mockery of human dignity. Animals have been part of the ecosystem for a long time. Animals kill each other, protect each other, copulate, and do all manner of things without human help and will continue to do so without human intervention and without caring a bit about personhood or what it is. There is just no reason to ascribe personhood to animals. The only possible reason would be to ensure that humans don't mistreat animals or cause them to go extinct. But ascribing them personhood status is not necessary for that, either.

[1] I'm not wanting to get into a debate about evolution. It's certainly possible that God used evolution as the mechanism by which to create humanity. The operative idea here is if naturalistic evolution is true, this is the idea that would follow.

[2] Again, the debate regarding capital punishment is beyond the scope of this article. This idea here is that whatever the penalty for murder is, that's what you deserve if you "murder" a chimpanzee.

‘Pregnant woman leaves prolife advocates speechless’ – A Response to a viral Pro-abortion/choice video

Over the last week the abortion debate has been reawakened in the UK, after a viral video of a pro-choice/abortion women criticising prolife campaigners went viral and has been seen nearly 5 million times. The abortion debate has been on the front of newspapers, on the TV, Radio and all over the internet, the first time to such an extent for quite some time. Borrowing the words of Francis Schaeffer, the roof has come off and people have been made aware of the point of tension. Simply that abortion is a violent, dehumanising act that kills a whole, living distinct human being and abortion imagery makes that fact impossible to hide from. This has made a lot of people very angry and the UK press are not happy about it!

The viral video has been extremely popular but I have written a response to it which you can read here, and there is also a link in the first paragraph to the viral video.

My Thoughts on Brittany Maynard's Situation [Clinton Wilcox]

You've probably heard the case of Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman who was diagnosed with degenerative brain cancer, who took her own life rather than lose control of her bodily functions in what she referred to as "dying with dignity." Now, like all contentious issues, there are terms used that are emotionally-charged and obfuscate the main issue. In the case of euthanasia, "death with dignity" is one such term, since it implies that those who choose to live out their lives and accept the consequences are not dignified in their death.

Maynard's situation was tragic, and no one truly knows what they will do when they find themselves in that situation. It is a lousy situation all around. What she did was not brave, to be sure, but neither am I comfortable calling it cowardly, either. Even though she did the wrong thing, she was trying to take a situation that was beyond her control and bring it under her control. I don't want to overlook the tragedy of the situation, as so many have done so far. It's easy to denigrate someone for their choices when you're not the one going through it. I have even seen some indicating that because she committed suicide, she will not be in Heaven. But this is bad theology; Jesus told us that there is only one unpardonable sin, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12: 22-32). I do not know Maynard's spiritual condition. But the only thing that would keep her out is if she wasn't trusting in Christ as her savior and redeemer.

The stark reality is that Maynard did not "die with dignity." As Trent Horn points out, dying with dignity is about how you face death, not about how you die. Choosing an early death is not dying with dignity because death, itself, is undignified. It is our enemy, which is why Christ had to come and conquer it. With Christ, death is not final. There will come a time when all the dead will be resurrected, and this is the time that we, as Christians, can look to for hope. Maynard taking her own life prematurely was not dying on her own terms, because she was already dying. Her choice to commit suicide was merely preventing death from dealing the final blow.

The situation was made even more tragic by the fact that she was in constant pain. Now, there are painkillers one can take, and as Trent mentioned in his article, it is not impermissible to take painkilling medication that has an unintended side effect of shortening one's life. But to directly take one's own life to avoid what comes at the end of life is wrong. There have been others who have a similar condition to Maynard's who tried to urge her not to take her life, such as Kara Tippets.

I've seen several people wondering about how her situation differs from people on 9/11, who jumped from the Twin Towers to escape the burning flames that were engulfing the building. The disconnect is that the people jumping were trying to escape the flames, and probably weren't thinking clearly in the heat of the moment (pun definitely not intended). Maynard's death was a premeditated act that implicitly says she doesn't believe that living a full life of suffering and accepting the consequences is dignified.

It actually makes me think of a general on a battlefield, fighting a losing battle. Surely if a general were to engage in a losing battle knowing that he had no hope of winning, that would be wrong. It would be tantamount to murder of his soldiers, and suicide if he didn't make it out, himself. But what if they are engaged in battle with a ruthless enemy, with no hope of winning? The heroic thing to do is to fight to the very end, not to surrender and allow the ruthless enemy to slaughter your soldiers.

Allowing the decision to end the lives of people who are suffering opens a slippery slope. How much suffering is too much before we deem a life not worth living? We've already seen some of this in our culture which has allowed abortion and euthanasia, such as the fact that roughly 90% of unborn children diagnosed with Down's syndrome aborted, and children like Baby Doe who was born in 1984, but had Down's syndrome and needed a surgery to correct a condition in his throat so that he could eat. Since he had Down's syndrome, the Supreme Court allowed the parents of Baby Doe to murder their own child by starving him to death.

We already live in a culture that doesn't respect life and doesn't understand the wonder and the beauty of it, even those lives that are not lived up to our culture's standard of quality. Brittany Maynard's case is the latest in a tragic line of people who viewed their own lives, or the life of someone else, as not worth living.