In April 1945, American forces were moving into the heart of Germany. They eventually freed a city named Weimar, a beautiful town with a haunted past. On top of the hill outside town was what we know today as the Buchenwald concentration camp. It was not as large as Auschwitz or Dachau, and yet the grisly findings of Buchenwald overshadowed those of other camp locations. For example, the camp superintendent’s wife was fascinated by human skin, even having a lampshade made of it from the prisoners. She was also quite taken with tattoos and had them removed from prisoners and preserved.
The horrific, inhumane acts that took place at Buchenwald shocked American leadership. In fact, when Generals Eisenhower and Patton toured the camp, Patton forced Weimar’s mayor, magistrates and leading citizens to tour it as well. He wanted them to see what had taken place right under their noses for many years. History looks askance at the citizens of Weimar, and yet they weren’t actively involved in the atrocities. “Wir haben nicht gewusst!” they cried. “We didn’t know!”
How could they not know what was happening in plain sight? They knew ... but kept their eyes down. In southern terms, they didn’t pay ‘em no mind. They didn’t want to be burdened with such a moral dilemma, because it did not directly affect them. And so, yes, history has treated the memory of those citizens very, very poorly.
How will history treat us? A recent New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) article published in March prompts me to ask this question.
Aptly named “Back to the Future in Alabama,” R. Alta Charo, an accomplished bioethicist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School critiques the Alabama Supreme Court’s recent decision on LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, our state’s now-famous in vitro fertilization (IVF) case. If you need a refresher course, check out this article and this article from 1819 News detailing the saga.
I could spend an inordinate amount of time dissecting Charo’s article. To summarize, she touches on a few legal precedents involving reproductive-medicine ethics through the decades, citing these to show the diversity of legal exceptions that have existed in contrast to Alabama’s recent decision to consider frozen embryos as actual human lives.
There’s that word with which our relativistic age seems obsessed: diversity. Our secular culture’s zeitgeist seems to be a variation of “Give me diversity or give me death!” and the West seems fascinated with diversity when it comes to moral claims:
- Is sex only for marriage?
- Is marriage only between one man and one woman?
- Are male and female really the only gender options?
- Is a child in the womb really a child or something less than human life?
This particular instance is no different, and Charo’s article seems to highlight this in terms of children who are ex vivo, or outside of the womb, frozen until implantation.
It’s almost as if she’s saying, “Look how many other ways we can decide what to do with these things some consider humans and others a clump of cells.” In other words, personhood is off the table because so many other diverse opinions exist about what to do with frozen embryos ... opinions that do not involve considering them actual human lives.
“What precisely is the status of the embryo outside of the body?” she writes at one point. By the same measure, one can only assume she’s also asking, “What precisely is the status of the embryo outside and inside the body?” That’s the thrust of this article, and that’s the thrust of the left in their efforts to continue advocating for the dehumanizing of millions upon millions of God’s image bearers.
How will history treat us? I would dare say most of you reading this would call yourselves Christians, as I call myself. How are we to stand up to this culture shift as Christians? As we shield our eyes from the atrocities of a culture that treats children of early development (inside AND outside the womb) as political bargaining pieces, will history look back on us like the people of Weimar who said, “We didn’t know?” Or will history remember us as the generation of faithful Christians who, by God’s grace, defiantly stood our ground that God’s image is inherently imprinted on all human life, from conception onward? Are we going to be the faithful remnant who stands together in reverential fear of God, or will we tuck tail in fear of the Facebook comment section?
I pray people will look back on us with inspiration of what can happen when Christians truly follow Christ in word AND deed. Our state’s Supreme Court has at least taken a massive step in the right direction.
“Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence....” - 1 Peter 3:13-15
Andrew is an internal medicine physician in Scottsboro, Ala. God has blessed him with a wonderful wife and two awesome sons. He has a special interest in Reformed theology and cultural apologetics.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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