"Humanist" dehumanization

Many of our surviving grandparents’ generation can remember where they were when they heard the news of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor.  I can remember where I was on November 22, 1963, the day John Kennedy was assassinated (I was at school and it was a “history dress up day,” and one of my classmates was dressed up as President Kennedy).  Even the youngest of you can remember what you were doing on September 11, 2001, when terrorists flew airliners into the World Trade Center towers in New York City.  

     But almost no one (who was an adult at the time) remembers where they were or what they were doing when, on January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion across our nation.  People (including believers) didn’t notice, because they weren’t paying attention.

     For many of us, it was not until a few years later, when Francis Schaeffer produced his film series How Should We Then Live?, that we became aware of what had happened.  In his discussion of “sociological law” and “arbitrary absolutes,” Schaeffer used the Roe v. Wade decision as a prime example of the use of law to dehumanize a huge segment of the American population (the pre-born), and provide the legal justification for their wholesale slaughter.  In the ensuing 36 years, nearly 50 million babies have been murdered under the guise of “safe and legal” abortion.  Today 4000 more “legally” dehumanized people will meet their deaths.  And we have a president-elect who promises to tear down any remaining legal “hinderances” that prevent a woman’s “freedom of choice” to kill her child.

     In the flow of “humanist” thinking and action, dehumanization becomes the rule rather than the exception.  It has often been pointed out that the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision (1857) declared blacks non-persons before the law; but now “by an arbitrary absolute brought in on the humanist flow [Roe v. Wade], millions of unborn babies of every color of skin are equally by law declared non-persons” (Schaeffer’s words).  This is the hypocricy of “humanism.”  We are “for humankind,” but we get to decide who will be “human.”

     “Pushing the antithesis” here means letting the Creator-God tell us what true humanness is, and affording all who fit his category the full protection of the law.  Pray God it will be so again soon.