To the Source asked me to opine about the scandal of UK hospitals using the bodies of aborted fetuses to heat hospitals. From, “The Next Logical Step:”
Like most people, I was shocked by the macabre story that broke in the United Kingdom this week. It seems that “at least 15,500″ aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated to heat several hospitals over the last few years. Not cremated and respectfully interred, mind you: Incinerated as fuel to run the boilers.
Shocked yes, but not surprised…To put it bluntly, legalizing abortion at will transformed fetuses in the minds of at least half the population into a killable caste—akin to a tumor or a vial of tainted blood—that can be destroyed at will (except in the latest stage of pregnancy, and in the USA, often even then).
Once any category of humans is devolved into a killable caste, why treat their remains respectfully?
I get into Kermit Gosnell’s macabre crimes and his keeping fetal body parts in a jar.
Similarly, Jack Kevorkian considered disabled and dying people who wanted to die a killable caste, thereby justifying vivisecting those he was euthanizing–the ultimate goal of his assisted suicide campaign.
The Belgians have coupled euthanasia with organ harvesting–transforming despairing disabled and mentally ill patients into so many potential organ farms–with nary a peep of protest outside of disability rights and pro-life commentary.
I conclude:
So, back to dead fetuses as heating fuel in the UK: We should be shocked! Indeed, may we never be sanguine about such horrors.
But we should never again be surprised. As we have seen historically—slavery, the Holocaust–once we create killable castes of people, making utilitarian use of them becomes an easy, and indeed, logical, next step. Those with eyes to see, let them see.
Such are the consequences that flow logically from rejecting human exceptionalism and the unique value of human life.
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exeptionalism.
