FIRST APPLIED LINGUISTICS, THEN APPLIED BIOLOGY (via Matt Murphy):

"A New Ethic for Medicine and Society" (National Right to Life News, March 11, 1998)

Editor's note. In the early days of abortion `reform,' pro-abortionists insisted their agenda was modest and unassuming. In contrast with this phony humility, few, if any expressions mare candidly admitted that the agenda of the pro-abortion movement, required the abandonment of the traditional Western ethic's commitment to the "equal value of every human life" than this reprint. This editorial first appeared in the September 1970 edition of California Medicine, a publication of the Western Journal of Medicine. Many younger pro-lifers have heard references to it. We reprint it in its entirety for their edification.

The traditional Western ethic has always placed great emphasis on the intrinsic worth and equal value of every human life regardless of its stage or condition. This ethic has had the blessing of the Judeo-Christian heritage and has been the basis for most of our laws and much of our social policy. The reverence for each and every human life has also been a keystone of Western medicine and is the ethic which has caused physicians to try to preserve, protect, repair, prolong and enhance every human life which comes under their surveillance. This traditional ethic is still clearly dominant, but there ia much to suggest that it is being eroded at its core and may eventually even be abandoned. This of course will produce profound changes in Western medicine and in Western society.

There are certain new facts and social realities which are becoming recognized, are widely discussed in Western society, and seem certain to undermine and transform this traditional ethic. They have come into being and into focus as the social by-products of unprecedented technological progress and achievement. Of particular importance are, first, the demographic data of human population expansion which tends to proceed uncontrolled and at a geometric rate of progression; second, an ever-growing ecological disparity between the numbers of people and the resources available to support these numbers in the manner to which they are or would like to become accustomed; and third, and perhaps most important, a quite new social emphasis on something which is beginning to be called the quality of life, a something which becomes possible for the first time in human history because of scientific and technological development. These are now being seen by a growing segment of the public as realities which are within, the power of humans to control and there is quite evidently an increasing determination to do this.

What is not yet so clearly perceived is that in order to bring this about hard choices will have to be made with respect to what is to be preserved and strengthened and what is not, and that this will of necessity violate and ultimately destroy the traditional Western ethic with all that this portends. It will become necessary and acceptable to place relative rather than absolute values on such things as human lives, the use of scarce resources, and the various elements which are to make up the quality of life or of living which is to be sought. This is quite distinctly at variance with the Judeo-Christian ethic and carries serious philosophical, social, economic, and political implications for Western society and perhaps for world society.

The process of eroding the old ethic and substituting the new has already begun. It may be seen most clearly in changing attitudes toward human abortion. In defiance of the long held Western ethic of intrinsic and equal value for every human life regardless of its stage, condition, or status, abortion is becoming accepted by society as moral, right and even necessary. It is worth noting that this shift in public attitude has affected the churches, the laws,

and public policy rather than the reverse. Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. [...]

It is not too early for our profession to examine this new ethic, recognize it for what it is and will mean for human society, and prepare to apply it in a rational development for the fulfillment and betterment of mankind in what is almost certain to be a biologically oriented world society.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's musing on the eugenic basis of abortion wouldn't have surprised anyone back in the day.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 28, 2009 6:30 AM