A Baby What?

One proposition that went down to defeat in the recent election was Colorado’s Proposition 62. Here’s how the proposal read:

“An amendment to the Colorado Constitution applying the term 'person' as used in those provisions of the Colorado Constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice and due process of law, to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.”

I find it interesting that voters went to the polls to decide if an expectant Colorado mother was “with child” or “with” some other unknown life form. And I find it tragic that voters found unborn children less than human.

It’s not that the answer to the question is really that difficult. I doubt that anyone is confused about whether or not the result of conception is a new life. That’s not the issue. During a debate on the proposal, here’s the way one Colorado intellectual explained it:

“I mean I have a cold, so I have a virus in my body, and that’s also something little and living inside of me. But if I’m going to try to kill it I’m not gonna be like, ‘Oh no it was a virus thing I just killed a life.’ It’s not the same thing.”

To help the lady out a bit with her argument, I think that she was trying to say that a virus and an unborn child actually are the same. There is life, although not human life – in her opinion. And that was the opinion of most other Colorado voters.

But are these people really convinced that it’s possible for two humans to conceive something not human, something that at some later time becomes human? No one has even ventured into that uncertain ground. Like our President, they find it easier to simply declare the subject above their pay grades and move on.

The reality is that, yes even in Colorado, unborn children are alive and human and voters know it. This is a simple truth, but an uncomfortable one when deciding to kill them. Ultimately that’s why the people of that state voted to affirm what they knew to be a lie. By deeming the unborn to be unhuman the value of human life issue ceases to be a problem.

It has been done before. For example, in the Dred Scott decision of 1857 the Supreme Court decreed that black people are “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race.” As with Colorado babies, legal issues regarding black brothers and sisters could be made to disappear by simply deeming them to be “of an inferior order.”

This leads us to the heart of the issue. What is it that makes human life valuable and who decides? I would insist that voters and justices are not qualified to determine the value of human life because they are not the ultimate source of life. That’s why the unalienable right to life is not bestowed by a benevolent government but by our Creator. Our laws can deny or withhold or regulate that right, as in Colorado, but they can never grant it.

You see, human life has value and is worth protecting because only humans have been created in the image of God. There is something unique about being human that has never been observed in any other creature. Man alone has the capacity for self consciousness and self determination, creativity, love, a sense of justice and morality. There is a kind of greatness in every person that doesn’t result from the ballot box or a courtroom.

“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

Thomas Jefferson