You might have heard of the case, but if you haven’t, Alfie Evans is a British toddler suffering a terrible disease from birth. He’s been on life support and the government has decided that further efforts should not be taken to treat the boy and so have decreed that it is time for him to die – the parents take exception to this, but they don’t count. The kid has gotta die: the government says so…and even if it would cost the government nothing (or, in this case, cost the government even more to prevent health care from being applied), the death must happen.
Where did this come from? The first moment someone said that abortion should be legal. There’s a rather bright line here, folks: we’re not supposed to kill people. Even killing in self defense is still in the nature of “least bad” rather than “good”. Once you cross that line and say that some killing is good, then you have broken down the barrier…and in a short time, all killing will be good.
Remember: abortion was only supposed to be used in the most extreme cases: hundreds of millions of deaths later, we see where that went. We were told at the start of the “death with dignity” push that it would only apply to fully conscious adults who were incurable and suffering untreatable pain. Now, we see it being applied to some poor kid who, though ill, is not apparently at death’s door, given the fact that he didn’t die when they took him off life support. But, the government is resourceful: since the kid didn’t cooperate by dying immediately, I’ll bet they’ll eventually come up with the Schiavo Alternative and just let the kid starve to death. Now, just to get it out of the way: yes, some times health care is pointless. If a person can’t breath on their own, it may be time to die. If they can’t metabolize food and water, it is definitely time for them to die. But in each case, on their own time…if you can’t breath, you’ll suffocate…and if you don’t suffocate in a few minutes, it isn’t moral to have a pillow put over your head to hurry matters along. Can’t eat? Well, try – see if it digests. If it does, you get to live…if it doesn’t, you’ll die. But don’t refuse to give food to a sick person on the theory they can’t digest and/or can’t live much longer anyway.
They will decree our deaths for any and all reasons if we keep down this route. Addict? Die. Not too smart? Die. A little bit too smart? Die. Believe in silly superstitions like Christianity? Die. You think they won’t? You think these people who are killing a little kid – having 30 police in place to prevent the parents from taking the kid out of the hospital – won’t do that as soon as they have the power? What is to prevent them? Moral conscience?
Our only path back from this is to re-affirm that life is sacred – that each, individual human being has dignity and must be treated as such from conception to natural death. Abortion must be banned. The end. If we don’t do that, then these murderers masked in false mercy will eventually sit in judgement on our lives and decide if we get to live, or not.