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Silence Is Not
Golden
By Kate Burch
This past week I viewed an unspeakable horror, and I cannot banish it
from my mind. It was video of a female physician, of some rank at
Planned Parenthood, casually discussing, while eating salad and sipping
wine, the use of ultrasound to guide the forceps as she performed an
abortion so that the more valuable parts of the baby’s body would be
spared for sale while still effectively killing the victim by crushing
other vital body parts.
I also read this week yet another op-ed advising Republican candidates
to avoid talking about the “social issues” because they will never win
the votes of the millennials if they do.
I think this is exactly backwards. Those of us who believe that
many practices viewed as acceptable today are not only coarsening our
culture, but are frankly destructive of our institutions and our
people, must speak out in witness of the truth. To remain silent
in the face of evil is cowardice, and will even facilitate the
burgeoning of evil.
My former physician, who cared for me from my childhood until about
twenty-five years ago, had an embellished and framed Hippocratic Oath
on the wall of his consulting room. The oath, which all new
physicians swore in the past, specifically forbade physicians from
terminating a life or administering “poisons” to a pregnant woman to
cause the death of the child. “Modernized” versions of the
Hippocratic Oath no longer mention abortion. These new forms of
the oath affirm that doctors will focus on the patient, not the
disease; that they will graciously acknowledge their limitations and
refer patients for whom their expertise does not suffice; that they
will emphasize prevention over cure; and that they will respect the
privacy of their patients. All good. Now, here is the part
that you may find shocking: “If it is given to me to save a life,
all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life;
this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and
awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.”
What have we come to when a person can be heavily fined and/or
imprisoned for endangering the life of a snail darter, yet abortionists
and the women who are complicit in murdering their—often quite
viable—babes suffer no sanctions, nor even official criticism?
Charles Murray, the influential social scientist, wrote a few years ago
in his book “Coming Apart” about the new polarization of white America
into a class that is successful and one that has hardly a prayer of
achieving the “American Dream.” The successful class is composed
of people who practice the values that exemplified this country at our
founding: marriage, work ethic, respect for the law, and religious
observance. Those who are failing tend to eschew these values,
and their record of achievement is overwhelmingly dismal. Murray
says that this is the absolute worst time for the United States to push
for the growth of a European-style welfare state; that we need not a
government that grows without limit, but rather a kind of civic “Great
Awakening” that will help to re-inculcate the values of work, faith,
lawfulness, and marriage. He calls on us not to duck our heads,
but to speak up about our values. I would add respect for life,
and I would say that these values are not only key to achieving
material success, but also to achieving the good life.
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