From last Friday’s San Jose Mercury News article, “Simply, early blood test offers insights into fetal health” by Lisa Krieger:
Raising the prospect of a world without birth defects, a Stanford-created blood test that can detect Down syndrome and two other major genetic defects very early in a woman’s pregnancy will be available next week.
The simple blood test spares women the risk and heartache of later and more invasive tests like amniocentesis.
But it has startling social implications – heralding a not-distant future when many fetal traits, from deadly disease to hair color, are known promptly after conception when abortion is safer and simpler.
The $1,200 test, which analyzes fetal DNA in a mother who is 10 weeks pregnant, is being offered to doctors March 1 by Verinata Health, a biotechnology company in Redwood City, Calif. It licensed a technique designed by Stanford biophysicist Stephen Quake.
“It’s a game changer,” said Stanford University law professor Hank Greely, who studies the legal and ethical implications of emerging technologies. The controversy over abortion “is about to be hit by a tsunami of new science.”
Actually, no, that isn’t true. There is nothing new here at all with regards to the controversy over abortion.
Science is not an enemy of unborn children with disabilities. Lots of mothers and fathers, upon learning their unborn child will have a genetic abnormality, continue to regard that child as a real human being and let the pregnancy continue to birth. They have exactly the same information as people who choose to abort a child with a similar diagnosis.
The problem is in people and a culture that decides which human beings have value and which do not. American culture has drawn the line at disability. In other cultures, the line is drawn at gender. Science didn’t draw that line.
So, March 1 brings a new, earlier opportunity for people to know something about their unborn children.
Let us pray that thousands of mothers and fathers choose to make it an opportunity to trust God above all things, including when the news breaks their hearts and enters them into this world of disability.
The Works of God 
This evil appears new. It is not.
February 29, 2012 by John Knight
The headline was intended to provoke a response: After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?
It worked.
And it is a trap for those who stand against such evil.
Obviously, real evil like this must be called out for what it is. But when we do so, we actually grant the writers greater standing and credibility in the world than they deserve. And they will be heros, to some, for their “courageous” academic work given the hundreds of angry blog postings and commentaries that already exist.
If we ignore it, the culture continues down a heart-hardening slope where the language concerning the destruction of the most vulnerable becomes normalized. Evil behavior can then follow behind this language.
So, if it isn’t wise to ignore it, and it isn’t helpful to call it out, what should we do?
Here’s my suggestion: Call it what it is, and then dismiss it. Be persistent in helping people see how evil this thinking is, and also how old it is. Strip it of its power to incite rage and let them run into a wall of determined, eternal, protective regard for the weakest among us.
The idea they propose isn’t really even clever or edgy. For example, their promoting a new term for infanticide – ‘after-birth abortion’ – might be perceived as clever, but it certainly isn’t ground-breaking. And including typically-developing babies as candidates for murder appears shocking, but healthy babies are being birthed and then killed, if they happen to be girls, in some parts of the world today.
No, this isn’t new.
I don’t fault Dr. Giubilini and Dr. Minerva for being ambitious. Both are young scholars with very little published to this point in their careers and it is hard to get noticed.
But this is a horrible way for them to begin their academic careers. Let us pray for them – really pray – that God would call them away from such thinking and that they would use their talents for much more positive, life-giving and God-centered purposes.
Someday God’s wrath against the evil behind this article will be set aside because they cling to Jesus and his righteousness, or they will be held personally responsible for it and face God’s wrath themselves. That choice is easy, but only if they are granted eyes to see it.
And wouldn’t the world be shocked if that were to happen!
Share this:
Posted in commentary, News | 7 Comments »