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Posted by Steven M. Busch Today there are many places in our world where it is commonly accepted that a newborn baby born with a disability not only can, but should be discarded. That is eugenics practiced in its most insidious form. Yet we somehow fail to make the connection between euthanasia, abortion and eugenics. All of these evils reject the most essential founding principle of our nation... "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The founding fathers weren’t talking about differences in ability, strength, appearance, or intelligence when they penned those lines. The essential element of equality, as defined by America's founders, is that we are all given life by a creator who does not place a higher value on one human being over another. It is the creator alone who grants us our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The point being that our basic human rights, having come from God, cannot be legislated out of existence by human hands. By denying the source for our unalienable rights, America is eroding the concept of equality and paving the way for eugenics to become the dominant philosophy. Eugenics is life reduced to a mass of tissue where certain “traits” are categorized and evaluated on an arbitrary scale. Eugenics says that “good” or “desirable” traits, those traits which are determined to benefit the species, should be selected for, while less desirable traits are selected against. Charles Darwin believed he had identified this mechanism playing itself out in the natural world and called the process “natural selection”, a concept also known as “survival of the fittest”. Eugenics is simply a denial that all men are created equal. In the most common sense eugenics means that whites are better than blacks, babies with all ten toes and fingers are better than those born with something missing, etc. Eugenics tells us that once a person becomes old, disabled, or begins to place a “burden” on society, then that person is no longer of the same value as one who is functioning as a contributing member of the populace. By removing the "creator", and substituting "survival of the fittest" , man grants himself the authority to shape the human evolutionary process. Taken to the extreme, this passion to improve mankind by eliminating "unfit" individuals and selecting for the most desirable human traits led to the abuses of the NAZI holocaust. Yet these same eugenic concepts, which garnered so much condemnation upon Hitler, are increasingly prevalent in our own society today. Eugenics proponents claim that a baby born with a disability has less right to life than a baby born without a disability. We should all be horrified that European countries are passing laws that grant parents and/or doctors the authority to remove "inferior specimens" from the human family. Euthanasia/eugenics laws are spreading across Europe and could easily take root here in the States as well. And why not? After all, such laws are entirely consistent with the concept of legalized abortion. Yet even many disability rights advocates see no hypocrisy in saying they want to protect the rights of people with disabilities but also still protect a woman's "right" to an abortion for any reason! By definition, eugenics means all human beings are not created equal. Eugenics means that first and second trimester fetuses have less value than a third trimester fetus, and a third trimester fetus is of less value than a newborn baby. Eugenics accepts the notion that old people, the severely disabled, and many who cannot advocate for themselves, can and should be euthanized for the betterment of society. Our world accepts eugenics every time it places an arbitrary set of values on human life. If we reject the fact that God alone has endowed each human being with life and certain basic unalienable rights, from the very moment of conception, then we are eugenicists. If we deny that God placed an equal portion of His spirit inside each growing embryo, no matter the size or color, no matter the ability or disability, then we are eugenicists. If we deny the fact that God alone has the right to give life and take it away, then we are eugenicists. Steven M. Busch
on February 8, 2006, 3:51 pm
65.61.101.188
Thanks for the eugenics archive links Dave, here's my thoughts.
Throughout history some form of eugenics has been practiced by nearly every society on earth, including our own. Eugenics is not just about cloning, selective breeding, forced sterilizations or creating some kind of master race. Any time we place the value of human life on an arbitrary scale we are practicing eugenics.
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