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TechnoratiAbraham Lincoln, arguing against the institution of slavery, maintained that "[no]body has a right to do wrong." His point very simply was that no one has the right to degrade or harm a person and call it their right. In many quarters, Lincoln's argument would carry little weight in America today. In our "enlightened" secularized society, the relationship between moral truth and the law has been broken. Morals and ultimate values may be deemed to have a place, but only outside the legal arena. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the area of abortion. The "right" to abort a child results from the Supreme Court's decision to give primacy to so-called "rights of privacy and personal autonomy." Because of the weight given by the Court to the interests an individual has in personal autonomy and privacy, a woman's right of privacy was deemed by the Court to outweigh any claim her unborn child had to a right to life. Nowhere in its decision did the Court address the morality of a mother killing her unborn child.
In contrast, the transcendent moral law, spelled out in the Scriptures, recognizes the worth, value and dignity of all individuals, including children. A careful examination of Scripture on subjects relating to the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family (all of which are implicated in many biomedical decisions) yields numerous conflicts with our current civil law. Because of recent changes in the foundations of American law, Christians will do well to look to the law of God, as well as to the law of the land, when seeking guidance in making sound biomedical decisions.
The Psalmist declared, "The law of the LORD [not the law of man] is sure, making wise the simple." Rarely are there decisions that call for greater wisdom than the life-and-death judgments that are involved in the biomedical field. May God grant us the wisdom to discern not only that which is legal, but also that which is right.
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Ken Connor is Chairman of the Center for a Just Society in Washington, DC and a nationally recognized trial lawyer who represented Governor Jeb Bush in the Terri Schiavo case. Connor was formally President of the Family Research Council, Chairman of the Board of CareNet, and Vice Chairman of Americans United for Life. For more articles and resources from Mr. Connor and the Center for a Just Society, go to www.ajustsociety.org. Your feedback is welcome; please email info@ajustsociety.org
