By Chuck Colson
We must not lose sight of how critical it is to protect all human life.
In a 1995 encyclical entitled "The Gospel of Life," Pope John Paul II coined the phrase "the culture of death." By this, he was referring to the combination of laws and political and cultural institutions that systematically undermine the value of human life in Western nations.
One of the most important forces working in the culture of death is the field known as "bioethics" -- that is, the ethical standards being embraced to deal with medical and biological questions.
In his new book, appropriately entitled The Culture of Death, J. Wesley Smith chronicles what he calls "the assault on medical ethics in America." Smith analyzes the practices and philosophies that have taken the medical profession away from the moral certainty provided by the maxim of the Hippocratic Oath, "First, do no harm."
As Smith tells readers, the bioethics establishment "[rejects] what until now has been the core value of Western civilization: that all human beings possess equal moral worth."
As a result of this rejection, bioethicists increasingly embrace the idea that there are lives that are not worth living -- that the right to life is contingent on an arbitrary idea known as "quality of life."
[You’ll remember this post if Obamacare ever takes hold! – JS]
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