Without a doubt, we are the most advanced people to live on the earth. Our great Universities teach the most sophisticated knowledge, our technology has enabled us to conquer space, and our medical achievements are without historical peer. There is only one problem; I am starting to have some doubts.
For thousands upon thousands of years, religionists in “inferior” cultures have sacrificed human life to appease their gods. The Ugaritic texts depict the Canaanite deity Baal as a great storm god with the power of thunder and lightning in his hands. The “Prince Lord of the Earth” who sat upon Mt. Zaphon waiting for the men and women of earth to sacrifice their babies; for only with the death of human life would Baal then bring fertility to the land. Now in our age of great farming technology, we know that Baal does not determine the success of our crops and certainly we don’t need to kill babies to guarantee a good harvest. We are far too advanced to buy into that sort of religious bunk. Right?
Fast forward many thousands of years to North America where many of the native cultures practiced human sacrifice as a form of worship to appease their god’s and bring healing to the land. Human sacrifice remained an official part of Peruvian cultures until about 500 years ago when the Spanish conquered and abolished the barbarian practice. On further review, maybe it was only suppressed. Consider this recent AP news story from February 2004.
“Peruvian police investigate possible infant sacrifice to earth god”A decapitated baby boy found on a hilltop near Lake Titicaca may have been the victim of a centuries-old human sacrifice ritual meant to appease a pre-Columbian earth god, police said Wednesday. The remains of the infant, believed to have been seven months old, were discovered Tuesday on a peninsula in the Yunguyo region near the Bolivian border…
Peruvian anthropologist Juan Ossio said that human sacrifices date back to the Chavin culture, which flourished in Peru between 900-200 BC… “Sacrifices were made for more than a thousand year and it is hard to get rid of deeply rooted beliefs.” Anthropologists occasionally encounter reports of human sacrifices while conducting research in Peru, although it is more common to hear about old people being buried alive in an effort to appease the earthen gods, Ossio said.
Who knew? Jack Kevorkian may have a second career as an environmental activist who kills the elderly to save the planet, but that is another story for the future.
“Had Toni Vernelli gone ahead with her pregnancy ten years ago, she would know at first hand what it is like to cradle her own baby, to have a pair of innocent eyes gazing up at her with unconditional love, to feel a little hand slipping into hers – and a voice calling her Mummy.
But the very thought makes her shudder with horror. Because when Toni terminated her pregnancy, she did so in the firm belief she was helping to save the planet.
At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to “protect the planet”.Incredibly, instead of mourning the loss of a family that never was, her boyfriend (now husband) presented her with a congratulations card. While some might think it strange to celebrate the reversal of nature and denial of motherhood, Toni relishes her decision with an almost religious zeal.
“Having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet,” says Toni, 35.
“Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population.”
For this radical new religion served by the “Imps of Science,” humans are the enemy of Nature and it only seems right that we should sacrifice our babies to appease the wrath of Mother Earth. Kathleen Parker, Columnist for the Washington Post Writers group laments,
Although I doubt there are many willing to sterilize themselves in order to reduce the size of their carbon footprint, such extreme materialism is the evolutionary product of our gradual commodification of human life.
Suddenly, the unborn are of no greater importance than the contents of our recycling bin. Like Weight Watchers dieters substituting carbs for sugars, we trade off future members of the human race to neutralize insults to Earth’s present balance.
Is this the slippery slope that pro-lifers prophesied? Once such utilitarian concerns edge out our humanity – and once human life is deemed to have no greater value than any other life form – how long before we begin tidying up other inconveniences?
It just may be that we are at the top of the cliff because Toni is not alone in her fervor to eliminate the plague of humans that infest our earth. Diana Hull, president of Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) says,
“Human overpopulation is the fundamental environmental problem. Excessive greenhouse gases—like loss of open space, like traffic congestion, like never-ending sprawl—are one of the symptoms. Habitat loss due to population growth is the greatest threat to wildlife, a far greater threat than global warming.”
Writing in the Medical Journal of Australia Barry Walters, an associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia,
…is making that case. Dr Walters says every family choosing to have more than a defined number of children should be charged a carbon tax. He goes on to argue that those purchasing condoms or undergoing sterilisation procedures should be awarded carbon credits. The proposal is backed by Garry Egger, an adjunct professor of health sciences at Southern Cross University in New South Wales.
John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT and emeritus professor of family planning at University College London, said:
“The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. “The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.”
In 1968, Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich wrote a book entitled “The Population Bomb” in which he recommends forced sterilization and abortion as tools for controlling the population of humans that are destroying the ecosystem. And not to be outdone, the London Telegraph reports that some scientits are now suggesting that our study of the heavens is destroying the Universe… seriously, I am not kidding.
It will not be long before women who get abortions will also be seen as heroes and defenders of the nature religion. Certainly many thousands of years have passed since the first baby was sacrificed to Baal, but maybe we have not advanced all that much. Al Gore presides as the High Priest of the new Global Warming religion, and it will not be long before his acolytes, driven by his fear mongering, will begin to embrace the cultis of human sacrifice for the sake of appeasing the angry gods of the Environment.
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Great post Joe. My sister sent me the link to the article about the women sterilzing themselves to reduce their carbon footprint. Here was my response on the news site:
Liberals all over the world are killing their offspring by the millions. I would encourage more liberals to sterilized themselves. It’s cheaper and less messy than abortion.
Meanwhile, this conservative Christian family is working on child #4 with hopes for at least 10. Anyway, thanks for reducing your carbon footprint, I’m sure my grandchildren will appreciate it when I tell them the stories of how “liberals once walked the earth.”
And people say that things aren’t really that bad…
This article is from the Washington Post.
The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have
By Patricia E. Bauer
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — If it’s unacceptable for William Bennett to link abortion even conversationally with a whole class of people (and, of course, it is), why then do we as a society view abortion as justified and unremarkable in the case of another class of people: children with disabilities?
I have struggled with this question almost since our daughter Margaret was born, since she opened her big blue eyes and we got our first inkling that there was a full-fledged person behind them.
Whenever I am out with Margaret, I’m conscious that she represents a group whose ranks are shrinking because of the wide availability of prenatal testing and abortion. I don’t know how many pregnancies are terminated because of prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome, but some studies estimate 80 to 90 percent.
Imagine. As Margaret bounces through life, especially out here in the land of the perfect body, I see the way people look at her: curious, surprised, sometimes wary, occasionally disapproving or alarmed. I know that most women of childbearing age that we may encounter have judged her and her cohort, and have found their lives to be not worth living.
To them, Margaret falls into the category of avoidable human suffering. At best, a tragic mistake. At worst, a living embodiment of the pro-life movement. Less than human. A drain on society. That someone I love is regarded this way is unspeakably painful to me.
This view is probably particularly pronounced here in blue-state California, but I keep finding it everywhere, from academia on down. At a dinner party not long ago, I was seated next to the director of an Ivy League ethics program. In answer to another guest’s question, he said he believes that prospective parents have a moral obligation to undergo prenatal testing and to terminate their pregnancy to avoid bringing forth a child with a disability, because it was immoral to subject a child to the kind of suffering he or she would have to endure. (When I started to pipe up about our family’s experience, he smiled politely and turned to the lady on his left.)
Margaret does not view her life as unremitting human suffering (although she is angry that I haven’t bought her an iPod). She’s consumed with more important things, like the performance of the Boston Red Sox in the playoffs and the dance she’s going to this weekend. Oh sure, she wishes she could learn faster and had better math skills. So do I. But it doesn’t ruin our day, much less our lives. It’s the negative social attitudes that cause us to suffer.
Many young women, upon meeting us, have asked whether I had “the test.” I interpret the question as a get-home-free card. If I say no, they figure, that means I’m a victim of circumstance, and therefore not implicitly repudiating the decision they may make to abort if they think there are disabilities involved. If yes, then it means I’m a right-wing antiabortion nut whose choices aren’t relevant to their lives.
Either way, they win.
In ancient Greece, babies with disabilities were left out in the elements to die. We in America rely on prenatal genetic testing to make our selections in private, but the effect on society is the same.
Margaret’s old pediatrician tells me that years ago he used to have a steady stream of patients with Down syndrome. Not anymore. Where did they go, I wonder. On the west side of L.A., they aren’t being born anymore, he says.
The irony is that we live in a time when medical advances are profoundly changing what it means to live with disabilities. Years ago, people with Down syndrome often were housed in institutions. Many were in poor health, had limited self-care and social skills, couldn’t read, and died young. It was thought that all their problems were unavoidable, caused by their genetic anomaly.
Now it seems clear that these people were limited at least as much by institutionalization, low expectations, lack of education and poor health care as by their DNA. Today people with Down syndrome are living much longer and healthier lives than they did even 20 years ago. Buoyed by the educational reforms of the past quarter-century, they are increasingly finishing high school, living more independently and holding jobs.
That’s the rational pitch; here’s the emotional one. Margaret is a person and a member of our family. She has my husband’s eyes, my hair and my mother-in-law’s sense of humor. We love and admire her because of who she is — feisty and zesty and full of life — not in spite of it. She enriches our lives. If we might not have chosen to welcome her into our family, given the choice, then that is a statement more about our ignorance than about her inherent worth.
What I don’t understand is how we as a society can tacitly write off a whole group of people as having no value. I’d like to think that it’s time to put that particular piece of baggage on the table and talk about it, but I’m not optimistic. People want what they want: a perfect baby, a perfect life. To which I say: Good luck. Or maybe, dream on.
And here’s one more piece of un-discussable baggage: This question is a small but nonetheless significant part of what’s driving the abortion discussion in this country. I have to think that there are many pro-choicers who, while paying obeisance to the rights of people with disabilities, want at the same time to preserve their right to ensure that no one with disabilities will be born into their own families. The abortion debate is not just about a woman’s right to choose whether to have a baby; it’s also about a woman’s right to choose which baby she wants to have.
Very interresting post. Had no idea some were doing this.