[The following essay, by our founding editor James P. McFadden (1930-1998), was first published in the Fall 1983 issue of the Human Life Review.]

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“This is not the first time our country has been divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of certain human lives.” That sentence appeared in the article by President Ronald Reagan in the Spring [1983] issue of this review. Mr. Reagan was of course linking the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 to the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which held in effect that blacks could have no rights as citizens under the Constitution. The President is by no means the first to draw the obvious parallel between abortion and slavery: in both cases, a discrete class of human beings were denied not only the rights of citizens, but also the fundamental right to life itself. Just as, now, a woman holds life-and-death power over her unborn child, so, then, a Master held the same power over his human “property.”

As Mr. Reagan also noted, his predecessor (in the presidency, as well as in the championing of human rights) Abraham Lincoln struggled long and hard to find a peaceful solution to the slavery dilemma. Admitting that Dred Scott had affirmed it as “the law of the land,” Lincoln triumphed, but not peacefully. Yet long before he was president, he had argued that the solution lay not in the Constitution—subject then, and infinitely more so now, to meaning what the Supreme Court says it means—but rather in the Declaration of Independence, the document that truly founded the American nation, and which holds unambiguously, indeed as a “selfevident” truth, that all men are created equal.

“Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence,” Lincoln said once in Illinois, and with it “the practices and policy which harmonize with it.” Do that, he said, and “we shall not only have saved the Union, but have so saved it, as to keep it forever worthy of saving.”

Certainly the slavery-abortion parallel is strongest at this point: that human beings possess “Unalienable rights” that cannot be rightfully denied; that it is the fundamental duty of government to secure these rights. Thus the purpose of all the serious anti-abortion efforts of the past decade has been to achieve what would amount to citizenship for the unborn (indeed, in certain cases—inheritance, injuries and the like—the courts have long treated the unborn as citizens), because human rights begin at the beginning of life. This, Lincoln said, was the “majestic interpretation” the Founding Fathers wrote in to the Declaration, because “In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on . . .”

Yet these same noble fathers did not eliminate slavery. In fact, they actually wrote it into the original Constitution, albeit not by name, and only to prohibit its prohibition for several decades—their successors were left to deal as they might with this glaring violation of the Declaration’s principles. The final solution was, of course, the bloodiest war in our history, and even that failed to destroy the many lesser injustices that the “peculiar institution” had spawned, many of which remain with us still.

It is well to remember another parallel in the slavery-abortion equation. He who possesses the power of life and death over another feels compelled to justify that power. Just so, the Slave Power was not content to merely defend its practice as a justified evil. No, it must be declared good, even extended into new areas, and accepted by all. In short, slavery claimed its own ethic.

Those who now defend the peculiar institution of legalized abortion on demand also have their own ethic. This journal has reprinted several times an editorial—a Declaration, really—that first appeared in 1970 (in California Medicine, the official journal of the California medical association). The anonymous editor wrote that “The traditional Western ethic has always placed great emphasis on the intrinsic worth and equal value of every human life” and that this “sanctity of life” ethic— which has had “the blessing of the Judeo-Christian heritage”—has been “the basis for most of our laws and much of our social policy” as well as “the keystone of Western medicine”—all quite true. But, he went on, this “old” ethic was being eroded by a new quality of life one which would place only “relative rather than absolute values on such things as human lives” [our emphasis].

Like a moth around a flame, the editorialist instinctively hovered about abortion as the crucial issue: “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. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra-or extrauterine until death.” (Just as curiously, the fact of the slave’s humanity was “avoided.”) Not doubting that the old ethic was doomed, he concluded with this counsel for his fellow-doctors: “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 society.”

All in all, a remarkable piece of prophecy. About the only thing not predicted was that, just three years later, the Supreme Court would rule that the new ethic had been right there in the Constitution all along (although just where, it couldn’t say). Without question, the Court’s Abortion Cases overruled the “enlightened belief’ of the Declaration of Independence, and put the force of the nation’s fundamental law at the service of that “biologically oriented” New Future.

Predictably, the promoters of that future were not satisfied even with so stunning (and unexpectedly quick and revolutionary) a victory. The Court had used the fatal words “meaningful life”—hardly precise constitutional terminology, but precisely descriptive of the goal of the New Future. Surely if a “mother” and her willing doctor-accomplice may legally kill her unborn child merely because they predict that it will not have a “meaningful life,” this useful principle can and should be extended to the already living? If we can be certain about the meaningless life awaiting an unborn child, surely we can be much more certain of “a life not worth living” in the case of an already-born “imperfect” baby? Infanticide not only follows logically, it has followed in fact and, as everybody knows, is already a widespread practice.

Some are amazed that the leading segments of the medical profession have rushed headlong into the New Future. Doctors have long enjoyed great—indeed excessive—prestige in America. Generations have been raised to promptly open up, bend down, or roll over on command. Such power corrupts: whereas lawyers must argue, and journalists convince, “medical professionals” need merely issue orders and— worse—there is rarely a Superior Officer to countermand them. This reality was one thing when the profession adhered to its traditional first principle “Do no harm,” but it is quite another matter when doctors view themselves as high priests of the New Future cult.

That far too many doctors have embraced this new biological religion is beyond dispute, as vividly demonstrated by the response of the major medical associations to the so-called “Baby Doe” controversy. God only knows how widely infanticide has been practiced in recent years; those who read medical publications know that it has long been openly admitted—even recommended—in countless articles and “studies” by both American and foreign practitioners. And although it remains a crime to kill a born citizen, we hear nothing from our public prosecutors, nor from the “official” guardians of medical ethics. As far back as 1976, internationally renowned pediatric surgeon C. Everett Koop, in a public address to a meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said “Well, you all know that infanticide is being practiced right now in this country and I guess the thing that saddens me most about that is that it is being practiced by that very segment of our profession which has always stood in the role of advocate for the lives of children.”

How long such “curious avoidance” of widespread, illegal infanticide would have continued is impossible to say. But it is altogether fitting that it was a “family” pediatrician (the kind of “old-fashioned” doctor who earned the prestige the profession enjoys) who finally precipitated the current national controversy. The simple facts of the case are now generally known by all concerned, but a brief recapitulation (in laymen’s language) may be in order.

On April 9, 1982 (Good Friday, as it happened), a baby boy was born in Bloomington, Indiana. The family pediatrician was summoned, and found that the baby evidently had Down’s Syndrome—i.e., he was an “imperfect” child—and that his esophagus was not connected to his stomach. If the latter condition were not corrected, he would certainly die. Few dispute the fact that it could have been easily corrected. The pediatrician, Dr. James Schaffer (he deserves an honorable mention here) expected that the operation would take place, but the mother’s obstetrician— whose job was already done—spoke to the parents, who “agreed” that their baby should die. And little Baby Doe, after six painful days of “treatment” by starvation, did die (he was not even given water; merciful death was hastened by pneumonia caused by corrosive stomach fluids he vomited into his lungs).

Nobody disputes the central truth: Baby Doe was killed because he had Down’s Syndrome. Ironically, the hospital pathologist who performed the autopsy flatly stated the truth about that: “The potential for mental function and social integration of this child, as of all infants with Down’s Syndrome, is unknown.” Thus nobody knows how “imperfect” Doe would have been. But we must assume that his parents decided that his life would not be “meaningful,” at least to them.

Dr. Schaffer and others attempted by legal means to save Doe’s life, but were thwarted by a judge, who was, incredibly, supported by the Supreme Court of Indiana, which presumably has never read the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But the attempt produced a furor heard by Ronald Reagan and the by now Surgeon General Koop; the President ordered enforcement of federal regulations protecting the handicapped, and Dr. Koop became a key man in seeing that these “Baby Doe regulations” were enforced.

This bare-bones description of the many-faceted Baby Doe case could of course be greatly expanded (this review has already printed many thousands of words on it), but our point here concerns not the facts of the case but rather the medical profession’s reaction to it.

Virtually all the major medical organizations and associations quickly and adamantly opposed enforcement of the Reagan Administration’s “regs” led by the same American Academy of Pediatrics (supposedly, as Dr. Koop said, the prime “advocate for the lives of children”), which went straight to court in a so-far successful attempt to halt enforcement.

Here again, the details would fill a large book, but they cannot obfuscate the reality: the New Future advocates who now clearly dominate the American medical profession have declared that the old “sanctity of life” ethic is as dead as Doe; that “good medical practice” now includes life-and-death power over patients, and that nobody should interfere with “medical judgments” even when they prescribe what used to be called murder.

Other realities should be stated as well. For instance, every state in the Union has homicide statutes on its books which prohibit infanticide. Even if they did not, the Fourteenth Amendment should provide legal protection to “All persons born” under the jurisdiction of the United States against deprivation of life “without due process of law” and also denial of “equal protection” under state or federal law? The reality is that the laws are not being enforced, certainly not against those “medical professionals” who now believe themselves to be above the law, and entitled, literally, to get away with murder.

All this conjures up some grotesque ironies as well. Did not anti-abortionists predict that Roe v. Wade would produce just such lethal results? Have the pro-abortionists—most of whom publicly deplore the revival of Capital Punishment—noticed that the latest “humane” method of carrying out the execution of those judged guilty—just as in the execution of the innocent unborn—is by “medical professionals” thoroughly practiced in administering lethal injections?

The sad fact is that the Administration’s Baby Doe regulations invoke only the weakest sanctions against infanticide. If the courts ever do allow enforcement (an unlikely event: as their myriad pro-abortion decisions have demonstrated overwhelmingly, the great majority of our judges are also willing converts to the New Future religion), the “regs” would do more than threaten possible cut-offs of federal funds to a hospital or practitioner who denied treatment to an “otherwise qualified handicapped individual”—the entire wording is extremely vague, and could easily be circumvented by any reasonably clever “health care provider,” never mind a determined one. And that is the point: the cultists of the new ethic are determined to enforce their regulations as to who qualifies for a “meaningful life,” and their loud opposition to even ineffectual regulation merely demonstrates their total rejection of any interference whatever.

Too harsh? Well, consider the words of Dr. James E. Strain, the current president of the American Academy of Pediatrics [in the July ’83 issue of the Academy’s own newsletter]. He writes: “It is clear that there are certain infants with handicaps who should have full treatment. There is another group whose handicaps are so severe that any treatment other than supportive care would be inhumane and only prolong pain and suffering. There is a third ‘in between’ group where [sic] indications for unusual medical or surgical care are uncertain. It is the management of the third group of infants which should be reviewed by an ethics committee at the local hospital level. A model for this type of review is the institutional review committee that protects the rights of research subjects.”

Medical jargon aside (not that it isn’t worrisome: do you want your doctor to “manage” you in your hour of need?), Dr. Strain is plainly setting up his own triage situation, without bothering to mention that the prototype of triage was a horror justified (if it was justified) by emergency battlefield conditions, whereas most American babies are born in the best-equipped and lavishly-funded hospitals known to history.

He is doing a great deal more: he is announcing that “humane” people would condemn to death severely handicapped babies—just as, of course, they would save the category deserving “full treatment”—but that we must establish an “ethics committee” to handle a new category of “in-between” babies; all this will be done without reference to a born citizen’s legal right to life if he can be saved from death.

Now we are again brought face to face with the grim truth. Illegal infanticide is being widely practiced now, with little if any opposition from public prosecutors. Clearly the votaries of the “quality of life” ethic could go on with the killing, with little risk of prosecution. They could simply pay lip service to the Administration’s attempt to enforce the weak regulations, while being a little more careful in “hard cases” like that of poor Baby Doe. Why don’t they?

Well, President Reagan’s intervention has of course focused public attention on infanticide, at least momentarily, thus raising the risk of prosecution and the terrible possibility of losing federal money. But the broad phalanx of “professional” medical opposition is also based on that indignant rejection of any attempt to retard the New Future. More, Dr. Strain, for one, evidently sees in the “regs” controversy an opportunity to take a giant step “forward,” i.e., to vault the whole question right over any legal or governmental barriers and drop it entirely into the hands of extralegal “professionals” who would dominate his proposed “ethics” committees.

Indeed, the AAP has already issued a proposal for the make-up of such “local” (a nice reassuring note) review boards; the suggested name is Infant Bioethical Review Committee. In typical authoritative language AAP states flatly: “The IBRC shall consist of at least 8 members and include the following”—it then mandates a “practicing physician,” a hospital administrator, a “staff” member and a nurse, so that at least half the board can be right there in the hospital—plus representatives from the “legal profession,” the “lay community,” and a “disability group” and, most important of all, “an ethicist or a member of the clergy.”

The inclusion of a “disability group” member is more than merely interesting: as the AAP well knows, it is the Association for Retarded Citizens and allied “disability” organizations that have joined the Administration in the court battles for enforcement of the Baby Doe regs. Needless to say, all “imperfect” Americans have a life-and-death stake in the whole controversy. If today the “professionals” can kill them at birth, what awaits them in the looming New Future? Just as surely as the Supreme Court’s “meaningful life” rationale for abortion is now being applied to infanticide, it can and undoubtedly will be extended (Who would be surprised to discover that it is already happening?). Indeed, the AAP qualifies its description of the disability-group representative: he might also be a “developmental disability expert”—read another New Future professional—or a “parent of a disabled child.” In short, the prototype would allow for someone not disabled, such as Baby Doe’s father.

Clearly the AAP intends these extra-legal tribunals to hand down the final solutions to hard cases. Further, AAP-type professionals would control their actual makeup and have the power to enlarge the “at least 8 members” by additional “safe” members. The possibilities seem limitless, up to and including the kind of murderous “mercy killing” advocated by many German medical professionals before Hitler, and which they diligently practiced under the Nazi regime. I know: even to mention the Nazi experience is to invite “extremism” charges. Yet the historical record is clear (cf. the definitive study by Leo Alexander of “Medical Science Under Dictatorship,” which appeared in the July 14, 1949 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine). And to say that “it can’t happen here” is fatuous: pre-Hitler Germany was ranked very high among civilized nations, and was also the veritable fount of the reigning scholarship and wisdom in many if not most sciences, not least medicine. It is indisputable fact that German medical “scholarship” of the 1920s—in re euthanasia, genetics and more—laid the foundations for Nazi genocide. The Thousand Year Reich’s brief dozen years of power, however malignant in intention, could not have “succeeded” without the groundwork the medical professionals laid for it.

But weren’t Nazi atrocities (including, remember, forced abortions) condemned for all time at the Nuremburg war-crime trials? Yes indeed.

Malcolm Muggeridge has long contended (several times in the pages of this journal) that the only reason the “advanced” German doctrines on euthanasia and genetics did not spread throughout the Western world is that Hitler “gave them a bad name” and thus inadvertently slowed down the process that the legalization of abortion has now re-accelerated. But charges of extremism will still be leveled at anybody who invokes the Nazi precedent, and understandably so.

The notion that such horrors will happen strains ordinary credibility. Who could seriously want to go that far? Surely our doctors are still “humane” dedicated men? Surely they would agree. Here, alas, another of those not-to-be-mentioned Nazi precedents is germane. Dr. Karl Brandt was the highest-ranking doctor in Nazi Germany, a well-respected professional who joined the Nazi hierarchy literally by chance. He was tried and convicted for war crimes at Nuremburg, and duly executed. He of course readily admitted that the Nazis had gone too far—but that was his only defense. Both before and during Hitler’s regime, Brandt had in fact endorsed (indeed, helped formulate) the basic policies of euthanasia and experimentation on living humans (his argument—familiar?—was that animals were not “adequate subjects”). In his final statement, the condemned man said: “I am fully conscious that when I said ‘Yes’ to euthanasia I did so with the deepest conviction . . .” His defense of the special category of “child euthanasia” is even more relevant here; he based it on the desire to avoid long-term difficulties for the families saying, “We wanted to kill and put an end to these deformities as soon as possible after they had been born.”

No, it is not necessarily the case that the new quality-of-life votaries fully understand or intend what they in fact advocate, or all the possible results thereof. After all, it did take a Hitler to “overdo” the humane intentions of German doctors. That could never happen here. Maybe not. But Hitler “happened” as a result of a disastrous social situation brought on by military defeat. Our nation is now spending far beyond its means on social welfare, much of it medical costs. Could we not face, perhaps soon, a disastrous situation that would force cutbacks now unthinkable? And even now, isn’t it sensible to “allocate” scarce monies to saving only “meaningful” lives?

Such “cost-benefit” arguments already appear regularly in the medical journals (Just as, from the beginning, it has been argued that great “savings” result when the “poor” abort their children). Predictably, these arguments will grow with the cost pressures—not least because the medical profession is the prime financial beneficiary of the multi-billions now being spent on “health-care,” abortions, and the rest. Need we add that euthanasia (especially “pulling the plug” on anybody judged near death) is also openly advocated? As with infanticide, we must assume that such “adult” killing is already widely practiced.

But let us return to Dr. Strain’s review boards, and focus on what will undoubtedly be the key member: “an ethicist or member of the clergy.” Surely his will be the prestigious, persuasive advice? Who will dare go against the sage counsel of the “professional” expert in ethics, especially when the board is already stacked with the hospital’s own staff? The “lay community” member? The whole point is to determine whether it is moral to kill; the resident “ethicist” will be looked to for the “right” answer.

So the crucial point is this: What kind of ethicist is likely to sit on such boards? As it happens, we have a good idea of the type Dr. Strain favors. He is, as noted, current president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and thus its official journal, Pediatrics, can be presumed to reflect his views (if it does not, he has not told us so). Well, in July—while the Reagan Administration was asking for public commentary on its proposed Baby Doe regs—Pediatrics did indeed publish an editorial statement strongly attacking the Administration’s proposals. Given both the timing and content of the statement, it must be assumed that it is endorsed by Dr. Strain and the AAP.

The content is simply incredible, and must be read to be believed. Suffice it to say here that it might be aptly described as the “Son of California Medicine”—it starkly repeats the sanctity-of-life v. quality-of-life conflict—with abortion again the key issue—and calls upon us to “put aside the obsolete and erroneous notion of the sanctity of all human life” so that we can “look at human life as it really is: at the quality that each human being has or can achieve. Then it will be possible to approach these difficult questions of life and death with the ethical sensitivity that each case demands” [emphasis added]. To provide us with an idea of such sensitivity, the author writes: “If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog or a pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities . . .”

Who would write such stuff? Pediatrics describes the author as Peter Singer, MA, BPhil, FAHA, of the Centre for Human Bioethics, Monash University, Victoria, Australia. Perhaps we should note in passing that it is odd (or clever?) for the official trade journal of America’s “baby doctors” to employ someone who is not a member of the AAP, not a doctor—not even an American—to promulgate what amounts to an official position of the Academy?

Who is this Professor Singer? Well, no doubt about it, he is a bright young (only 37) man, educated at Oxford, a visiting professor at elite universities, a prolific author of books and articles—plus countless letters-to-editors, and much more. Nor does he tout pigs and dogs by chance. His best-known book is Animal Liberation, written in 1975; its main point is that we are guilty of “speciesism,” which he describes as “the tyranny of human over nonhuman animals.”

True, the book contains some noble sentiments, e.g., that “We have to speak up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves” and “The less able a group is to stand up and organize against oppression, the more easily it is oppressed.” The description certainly fits the unborn and Baby Doe perfectly—but of course Singer means animals. (Unfortunately the thing is evidently out of print in this country—understandably, there is only a limited market for such bizarre stuff—but given Singer’s sudden prominence as a spokesperson for the AAP, it deserves wide attention.) Singer also comes out vehemently against inflicting pain—on animals, of course.

Yet in his attack on the regs, he says nothing about Baby Doe’s six-day agony. But I think I have the answer to that seeming-contradiction: those who promote infanticide would gladly do the killing not only painlessly but instantly; however—as the California Medicine editorialist noted about the new ethic itself—they do not think the general public is quite ready for that kind of thing. (Besides, there is an important legal distinction involved: starving Doe was “merely” withholding treatment; giving him a lethal injection would have been another matter.)

The reader will recall that Dr. Strain’s model for an “ethics committee” was the existing type that “protects the rights of research subjects.” As it happens, Prof. Singer got into that controversy too a few years back and, typically, he had some strong views to expound. The whole thing was and remains vastly complicated and, yet again, directly involves abortion, which obviously produces “ideal” living human subjects. Many “old ethicists” cannot condone experimentation on living “fetuses” for any reason. Singer wrote a review of several volumes on the subject (for the New York Review of Books, August 5, 1976) and of course approved such research, and expected all sensible people would too: “Once we accept that the only interest the aborted fetus has is in not suffering . . . ” (As noted, Baby Doe’s case does not fit that principle.)

Some, among them Princeton’s noted medical-ethicist Professor Paul Ramsey, wrote letters strongly objecting to Singer’s inhuman views. Singer answered even more strongly (see the NYRB of Nov. 11, 1976). Quoting an ethicist who had said “all of us would be horrified” at the idea of dissecting living fetuses, Singer replied that once (read here, in the days of the old ethic) “one could have sat” on various commissions and “spoken with equal confidence of the horror ‘all of us’ would feel at the thought of open homosexuality, teenagers using marijuana, complete racial integration, full frontal nudity on stage and screen, and abortion on demand. Now, when people oppose any of these, we demand reasons instead of an appeal to feelings of horror. In particular, we are likely to ask: ‘What harm does it do?’ In the absence of sound arguments to the contrary, many of us have come round to the view that these things are not so terrible after all, and that some of them are positively good.” (He did not specify which ones.)

Obviously Mr. Singer has strong views on a wide variety of controversial questions, and is evidently still adding to the list: back home in Australia, he has recently argued “The Case for Prostitution” (in The Age of Sept. 18, 1980); “We should recognize,” he writes, “that those who earn a living by selling sexual services are fulfilling a socially valuable function.” And, anyway, “Most fundamentally, they do not cease to be people entitled to our respect.”

The really fundamental question is: Why would an official medical journal choose anybody with Singer’s flabbergasting intellectual baggage to put its case against the Baby Doe regs? The obvious answer is—must be—that Dr. Strain and his associates agree with Singer. Oh, but only in re Baby Doe, surely not all the rest of it?

Well then, let the AAP officially repudiate Singer. But we do not expect to see any such repudiation. Singer does represent the New Future, which is indeed committed to new ethics in all these matters. Consider: it is not enough to merely have the “freedom” to abort babies, you must make others agree that it is good to do so; leaving homosexuals alone isn’t enough, you must agree that theirs is merely an “alternative life style,” and so on, on and on. The arguments become almost identical in all cases—are we not asked to agree that infanticide is really done for the good of the child?—because all such “social issues” are part and parcel of the new ethic, which is why Singer sees nothing wrong with lumping them all together at every opportunity.

Lest the reader think we exaggerate his views, be sure that there is much more (and worse) available: Singer is on record on just about every “ethical” question known to man (and, of course, if animals could read, he’d hit the best-seller list). But our point here is that he is the prototype “ethicist” for those review boards; he holds just the “right” views, and we can expect to see him and his type much sought-after to answer the questions that are the heart of the matter, namely, Who shall live? and Who Shall decide?

The New Future is even more awful than it seems. Even if the majority of Americans knew about what is involved, they would find it impossible to transfer Singer’s inhuman notions to their family doctor. The grand strategic factor in the current War Between the Ethics is that the apostles of the New Future know precisely what they are doing—never mind what they may say—while the mass of Americans don’t yet realize there is a war, and those who do can scarcely believe that the enemy could seriously intend the predictable results. To be sure, the “old ethic” will not die: it is indeed based on the Judeo-Christian ethic, and it has been with us for thousands of years because, God knows, it is a human ethic. But of course it can be temporarily defeated, as it has been, often enough in history, whenever a militant, determined enemy has caught its defenders unprepared. Communism of course shows the lengths to which New Futurites can go—indeed, how “completely” they can succeed in setting up truly diabolical “utopias” ruled by inhuman New Men. But then Poland reminds us that, in the end, real men will remain to rebuild human society. The urgent need now is to prevent things going as far as they can go, while there is still time to do so.

But we stray again. Grand illusions will not do the job. We need practical solutions. Obviously the old ethic—the sanctity of all human life—must be defended, and restored. It is by no means a lost cause as, symbolically at least, President Reagan’s stand in re Baby Doe should remind us. The immediate problem is to translate principles into results.

Here, we make a modest proposal which would undoubtedly sharpen not only the issues, but also the beliefs of the contending warriors. Let us ask our “medical professionals” to add a few more letters to their shingles: after John Jones, MD, let us see either SLE or QLE—sanctity or quality of life, each as he actually professes. It’s only fair, surely, that “patients” know in advance what their doctor really thinks about their worth, here and hereafter? Without doubt such an honest owning up to one’s real “views” would become a prime tool in educating the masses to a problem that most certainly concerns them most personally. And of course doctors (all too many) who have been trying hard to straddle the two warring ethics would be forced to choose which side they are really on.

I have no doubt that the inspired reader can supply many more and better reasons for so simple a solution to a problem the greatest evil of which is that it is so hard to pin down. We need to know who really believes what. And, since our very lives are at stake, we deserve to know, do we not?

We began here with abortion, and all the evils it has spawned—just as slavery did—how can we end with anything less than a call for a Great Crusade to restore the sanctity of all human life? I am for such a crusade, of course, but I don’t know how to bring it about. Not now, even though the handwriting is on the wall, because the majority of our fellow citizens simply do not read it, or believe it if they do. They are much more likely to do so when it directly affects them (as abortion and even infanticide do not—we are beyond both). Our modest proposal would at least remind the New Futurites that they too are at risk. When his hour comes, will MD, QLE choose one of his fellows to “manage” his travail? Knowing what he knows about his views? Or will he (or she, of course, sorry) opt for one of the other guys, old-fashioned as he may be? As Dr. Johnson noted, the prospect of execution wonderfully concentrates the mind.