"Wrongful Birth" verdict: A good decision or a victory for evil?

Last week a family in Oregon won a court battle against their health care provider - Legacy Health System - because medical professionals there failed to let a pregnant woman know her unborn child had Down Syndrome. Had the mother known, she would have ended her child's life through abortion rather than let her live and be loved. The family has been awarded $2.9 million for the "Wrongful Birth" of their daughter.

The ramifications of this are chilling. First, medical doctors take an oath to do no harm. But in this case, the very existence of the child is assumed to be injurious and is seen as justification for murder. Why? Because she is not deemed worthy by a culture that's increasingly intolerant of physical imperfections, but more and more okay with heinous acts of evil.

The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability. It would be interesting to see if this child would have a case against her own parents for discriminating against her - to the point of wanting her dead - because of a perceived disability. But then again, we live in a country that makes it okay to kill any human being for the first nine months of his or her existence in the womb for any reason at all (and even after birth, if you consider those, like our own President, who believe mothers have the right to kill their newborn babies if they survived the abortion attempt made on their lives). Is it any wonder that people are now using the "right" to abortion not only to to pick and choose if they want the child, but what kind of child it should be?

Because Oregon also has legalized "assisted suicide", it puts those with disabilities who survived their mothers' wombs - and other vulnerable people, like the elderly - at particular risk. After all, if an unborn child is considered unworthy of birth because of a disability, then what's to prevent those living with disabilities from being targeted for "assisted suicide"? As our society puts an ever-growing premium on convenience and self-gratification over love and respect for every life, it would be easy to convince people they're doing a "favor" to the disabled person by putting them out of their "misery". We wouldn't want to live with a disability, so therefore the disabled person must not want to either, right? How simple to be duped into seeing it as an act of compassion to take the person's life from them to end their supposed suffering.

Overlooked, not just in Oregon, but across our nation, is that suffering comes in all forms, not just through physical handicaps. Some of the most physically perfect people suffer from all sorts of things, from depression and addiction, to poverty and domestic abuse, and so on. Why not put them out of their suffering, too? Why limit this "compassion" only to those born with the physical challenges God bestowed on them?

The power of suggestion is just that - powerful, and decisions like the one in Oregon suggest that life is not something to be valued for its inherent worth, but rather something to be tossed aside when it suits our needs. It suggests that human beings are not created by God with our own soul, our own unique traits, our own gifts and imperfections. The verdict suggests that God has less say than society does over who walks this earth, and that unless someone is perfect in our eyes, they shouldn't be here. And how easily people buy into it. To award someone almost three million dollars because, in their opinion, someone should not have been born, says it all. Our sense of decency and morality are disappearing at a heart-numbing rate, as the value of life itself all but disintegrates before our eyes.

As cases like this recent one in Oregon become more commonplace - which is precisely what's happening through things like selective abortion based on disabilities and even gender - the rightful shock and horror of many will probably, sadly, give way to gradual acceptance. The more exposure you have to something graphic, the less impact it eventually has. Taking human life has no more depth of meaning than simply being a "woman's choice".

This is precisely how the culture of death prospers. With Roe v Wade the country was handed a bill of goods that it is okay to take human life simply because we can. Now that "right" is being used to target specific people in the womb because they don't stack up to our ideal. And many are okay with that or just silently look the other way, because in this increasingly warped, godless culture, it is worse to judge someone's evil actions than it is to take an innocent person's life.

Looking back over the years since Roe v Wade, it's astonishing how our values have changed. It used to be that things like smoking cigarettes were the accepted norm, while actions like adultery and out-of-wedlock birth were frowned upon. Nowadays, it's okay for a woman to slaughter her own child in the womb, even up to the ninth month, but God help the pregnant woman who is seen smoking a cigarette.

If one believes that God creates all human life, then that means every single person on this planet is meant to be here by God's design. So it rightfully stands that there is no such thing as "wrongful birth" -- but we do seem to be suffering deeply from a lot of "wrongful indifference". It is this indifference that we should be fighting, not the birth of a baby.

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