The Ethic
The sanctity of life ethic, also known as the equality of life ethic, is the fundamental pillar upon which Western Civilization rests. It was the underlying source from which so much freedom has sprung over the last two thousand years. It is so fundamental to our values, our laws, and our mutual cohesiveness as a society that I call it The Ethic.
For some, The Ethic is expressively a fundamentally religious value. And, indeed, there is no doubt that advocacy for human equality is most vigorously promoted in Judeo/Christian theology and philosophy. For example, in the book of Leviticus 19:18, God commands Jews to, “love your neighbor as you love yourself”—a radical concept now as it was then. In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus expanded the concept of “neighbor” beyond one’s own group and applied it to everyone, even outcasts, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Two thousand years ago, a time when a good Jew would never enter a gentile’s home, when slavery was unremarkable, and when wives could be killed by husbands under Roman law without consequence, these words of universal human equality from the Apostle Paul to the Galatians (3:28) were breathtakingly radical: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
“We hold these truths to be self evident,” the deist and rationalist Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1776, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Absorb the message of what may be the single most influential sentence ever written: self-evident truths; all humans created equal; inalienable rights. Has there ever been a more stirring and eloquent celebration of The Ethic?
The Ethic possesses a very simple to state, hard to apply, but infinitely profound wisdom: that each human life has equal inherent moral worth. None of us are better or worse, superior or inferior, more valuable or less valuable, for being a woman or a man, black or white or yellow or brown or red, young or old, weak or strong, sick or well, disabled or able-bodied, decrepit or robust, and pro-lifers would emphatically add, born or unborn. The Ethic cuts through the false dualities and multiplicities that divide us from each other and recognizes one organic whole: humankind.
The Ethic Rejected
But some don’t see it that way. Increasingly, bioethicists, such as Princeton University’s Peter Singer, assert that being human is irrelevant to moral worth. What matters morally is whether an individual—be it human or animal-is a “person,” a category that must be earned by possessing sufficient cognitive capacities such as being self-aware over time. Individuals that fail to pass the test are denigrated as “non-persons” and lose the right to life, perhaps even the right to bodily integrity.
So, who are the so-called human “non-persons”? All unborn human life, surely, since embryos and fetuses are not conscious. This means, among other consequences, that embryos and perhaps fetuses can be harvested as if they were nothing more valuable than a corn crop. Indeed, that is precisely what occurs in embryonic stem cell research. Advocates of therapeutic cloning even assert that it should be permissible to create new human life by cloning with the purpose of researching upon and destroying it. Personhood theory’s war against the unborn is so radical that New Jersey passed a law in 2004 permitting human cloning, implantation, and gestation through the ninth month-only requiring that the cloned fetus be destroyed just before birth.
If unborn life is reduced to the status of penicillin mold, what about born humans with severed cognitive impairments? Surely, personhood theory would not similarly victimize these helpless humans.
Oh, yes it would! For several years, bioethicists and organ transplant professionals have advocated that a diagnosis of permanent coma be redefined as “death” to permit organ harvesting from the comatose. Some advocates go even farther. An article published in 2003 in the prestigious medical journal Critical Care Medicine urged that the “neurologically devastated” and “imminently dying” be permitted to be killed for their organs, assuming family consent.
The Essential Question
The essential question of our time is whether life has ultimate value simply and merely because it is human. Adherents to The Ethic, say yes. Advocates of placing a relative value for humans based on subjective criteria say no. How we answer this question as a society will do more than almost any other factor in determining the morality of the twenty-first century.