Lisa Rose, a graduate of UCLA, is the president and founder of Live Action, a non-profit organization that supports life and is known for its media advocacy and undercover investigations.   She recounts an incident that took place while she was a student at UCLA that tells us, in a striking way, how much attitudes have changed over the past several decades concerning life.

As a student at UCLA in 2006, she posed as a pregnant woman who was seeking pregnancy counselling. The head nurse at the campus student health center told her that, “UCLA doesn’t support women who are pregnant.”  Instead, she gave Lisa information about two local abortionists she could contact.

I think about that nurse and how she came to be indifferent to the life of the child in the womb.  Surely, when she first decided that she would choose nursing as a career, her attitude must have been radically different. Let us roll back the years and imagine what might have transpired on Career Day while she was a junior high school student.

“Welcome boys and girls to Career Day. It is most important for each one of you to think seriously about what kind of job or profession you will pursue that will mark the better part of your lives. You cannot plan too soon.  I am here to answer any questions you may have concerning the various careers you find personally attractive.”

Students raised their hands and mentioned their interest in being a teacher, a policeman, a social worker, a lawyer, a doctor, and a number of other well-known enterprises.  Everything was going along as usual until Beverly spoke up and declared she wanted to be a nurse. “Why do you want to be a nurse,” the teacher politely asked?  “Because,” Beverly replied, “I want to be in a position where I can be of assistance in killing people.”  It was clear from her demeanor that she was not joking.  She was dead serious. The teacher was shocked and, after she regained some degree of composure, informed her wayward student that killing is against the law and your so-called career will be spent in prison!  “Not if the killing is restricted to little people, those who inhabit the womb contrary to their mothers’ preferences. The time will come, when I am a fully registered nurse, that the services that currently appall you will be honored by many, including the prestigious institution for which I will work.”

The teacher was struck dumb. It took her a full minute to recover.  “If that is the future that you envision, let me tell you that I want no part of it. Life, even before birth, is sacred.  Assisting in killing is not something we want to talk about today. Nursing is a noble profession and is committed to caring for people, not killing them.  Class is dismissed.  Right now I could use the assistance of a real nurse.”

How much the moral universe has shifted from Career Day several decades ago when nurses were “angels of mercy,” to the present when they have become providers or assistants in killing!  The two worlds do not belong to the same culture.  How did this metamorphosis come about? If a major institution of learning can arrange for abortions, why can it not also arrange to help pregnant women?  What do people currently learn at educational centers?  Abortion is an expedient; life is difficult.  Is “higher education” (if one can use that expression) telling its students to take the easy road? If Thomas Edison spoke of his work as consisting of one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, has that ratio been reversed?

What is life but the opportunity to overcome difficulties and thus develop a personality that has some measure of meaning?  “Life is either a daring adventure,” Helen Keller was told us, “or it is nothing.”  “A happy life,” she added, “consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”  In today’s world, Helen Keller, deaf and blind from the age of two, would be a prime candidate for euthanasia.

What is Career Day like today?  Does a student plan his future as an abortionist?  Does he hope to be an uncomplaining citizen in a world that has lost its respect for life?  Does he want to relieve patients of their suffering though euthanasia?  Or does he want to live a life, no matter in what capacity, where he stands up for life and welcomes whatever hardships come his way–without despair and with a creative imagination?

The Spanish existentialist, José Ortega y Gasset stated that “man lives in the perpetual risk of being dehumanized.”  If we now live in a Culture of Death, we must not submit to its despair of life.  Colleges and universities should be helping people to live authentic lives, not hindering them from its achievement. A true culture, Gasset goes on to say, “enables man to live a life which is something above meaningless tragedy or inward disgrace.”

If we are to fill in the blanks that extend from Career Day several decades ago to the present, what would we write?  We would write:  a rejection of the moral wisdom of the past, a preference for expediency, the exaltation of the ego, and the loss of a belief in God.  What will Career Day look like in the future?  It is hoped that what has been lost will be recovered and that what is recovered will be revitalized.