NZ Government Policy Inconsistency #237

Consider two families: one has a two-year old girl with Down Syndrome, and the mother is pregnant, the other has a normal two-year old and the mother is also pregnant. The mothers both have antenatal screening tests. The first mother is expecting a normal child; the second mother is told that her child has Down Syndrome.

It is typical in New Zealand for the mother in the second case to be offered an abortion by their doctor or midwife.  (Although New Zealand law does not permit abortion on demand, the High Court has found that the statistics on abortion approvals indicate that that is what we have in practice.)

However, in the first family, we don’t allow the mother to kill her child with Down Syndrome and keep the normal one that she is carrying in her womb.

Why the difference?

The National Screening Programme which identifies unborn babies with Down syndrome is promoted by the Government as the “Quality Improvement Programme”.  If the Government is really serious about “improving the quality” of the New Zealand population by getting rid of people with Down Syndrome, why is it restricting the programme to the unborn?  Is Health Minister Tony Ryall too squeamish to send the men in white coats round to the IHC?  No; he just realises that New Zealanders are not ready (yet) for the culling of 2-year olds, 22-year olds, or 42-year olds.  But unborn children? No problem!  That doesn’t create even the smallest blip on the media radar.

Where do your rights come from?

Rights are not given to us by “the people”, the government, a constitution or a bill of rights.  If that was the case, they could then be taken away just as easily, therefore they obviously would not be rights at all.

• Every nation state that has ever existed, or will exist, has gone out of existence or will go out of existence.

• Every human being that has ever existed, or will exist, has an immortal soul that will last forever.

• The One who gives us that soul also established the natural law that gives us rights and responsibilities.

This is the basis for transcendent rights.

You have rights because of what and who you are, given by the law-giver of the natural law – Almighty God.

Have a chat with Him today and ask Him to help to form your conscience, in which lies your awareness of the natural law. You could also read some words inspired by Him, in the Bible.  Best of all, you could visit His Son, just pop into any Catholic church to experience the Real Presence of Jesus Christ.

(Thanks to Professor Charlie Rice for inspiring this note.)

If abortion is not wrong...

“If abortion is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”  Although this “quote” is often attributed to Mother Teresa, she never said it.  However, she DID repeat often the following:  “…The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself… the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

This reminds me of another famous misquote, "If God does not exist, everything is permitted."  Although usually attributed directly to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but sometimes to a character, Ivan Karamazov, in Dostoyevsky’s 1880 novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, neither of them actually uttered it.

Nevertheless, both “quotes” relate to the difficulties we have today when we, on the one hand, try to encourage “good” behaviour in children, young people and adults and, on the other hand, deny the existence of God and thereby any absolute standards as a foundation for that behaviour.

Those we try to admonish or correct will simply answer, “Why?” (or “Why not?”)  While responding “Because I say so” in a loud voice can work with young children for a little while, it gets a bit ridiculous and indefensible when dealing with adults.  But that is essentially all society can do in the context of today’s moral relativism:  whoever shouts loudest, gains a majority and makes the rules, earns the right to arrest and lock-up those with different views, much as parents do with the “time-out” room.

Too much political and personal decision-making today seems to be about who can garner enough support to get their own way, rather than any appeal to what is objectively right and wrong.