The Works of God

If you have not yet read Dr. Mohler’s blog from yesterday, The Scandal of Gendercide – War on Baby Girls, I recommend it.

What is amazing is that he is commenting on an article, War on Baby Girls: Gendercide, in The Economist, a secular publication that believes “in free trade and free markets. . .“

Here is some of what The Economist reported:

It is no exaggeration to call this gendercide. Women are missing in their millions—aborted, killed, neglected to death. In 1990 an Indian economist, Amartya Sen, put the number at 100m (one hundred million); the toll is higher now. The crumb of comfort is that countries can mitigate the hurt, and that one, South Korea, has shown the worst can be avoided. Others need to learn from it if they are to stop the carnage.

Why is this happening?

In fact the destruction of baby girls is a product of three forces: the ancient preference for sons; a modern desire for smaller families; and ultrasound scanning and other technologies that identify the sex of a fetus.

Why write about it on this blog?  Because those three forces, only slightly altered, could just as easily have been written about the destruction of children with disabilities.  Is there any material difference between the three forces described above and these three that result in amazing rates of abortion of disabled babies in our country?

1. The ancient preference for a ‘normal’ child
2. A modern desire for family members that don’t inconvenience us too much, or who experience too much suffering
3. Ultrasound scanning and other technologies that identify a disability in the fetus.

When we become untethered from the Bible, which describes the eternal, foundational, unchanging character and attributes of God and his view of his creation, human beings lose their God-granted value and dignity.  Babies become expendable, whether we are talking about girls in China or children with disabilities in America.

The Economist argues that girls in these countries can be saved through economic and educational interventions.  I didn’t find a similar argument being made for children with disabilities.

I would recommend a different solution for both:  Exodus 20:13 “You shall not murder.”