Pastor Jacob Birch and Orphan Embryos

Its rare to hear or read pro-life sermons or statements from Evangelicals in Canada any more. I mean with Canadian hospitals, clinics, doctors and women killing nearly 95,000 children a year i suppose it really isn't a big deal. Canadians kill 28 babies for 100 that are born alive. Think about that.

And now - as evidence of slippery slope arguments made years and years ago - we are faced with a new horror. Frozen children - embryos conceived in the lab for couples wanting to have a baby by invetro-fertilization - are either going to be killed or experimented on. Some already have. Some already have without the consent of their parents.

Much courage to Tom Blackwell of the National Post for writing about this brave new wrinkle in the ongoing holocaust of the unborn. (Since the Supreme Court's striking down of the Criminal Code restrictions on abortion in R vs. Morgentaler 2.5 million Canadian children have been killed). Most telling in his article is the total absence of any statement from any identifiable faith group. I don't know whether it was because Mr. Blackwell couldn't get someone to respond or didn't bother to ask. Both are perhaps telling. 

I will address just one of many, many horrendous realities Mr. Blackwell details about this situation. I won't deal with the medical professionals that call these children a "valuable scientific and clinical resource". I also won't talk too much about the mom who admitted that allowing her frozen child to be experimented on would be "worse than abortion". What was it to allow them to be frozen in perpetuity in the first place?

I will address the comment of fertility physician Dr. Art Leader who when discussing the lack of legislation from either the federal or provincial governments on this issue said "It is anywhere from disappointing to disgusting that we don't have an ethical framework. Neither level of government really wants to touch this with a 10-foot-pole." 

In one sense Dr. Leader is true. Having abandoned the "life begins at conception ethical framework" found in the Bible and in the Judeao-Christian tradition our country was founded on we have no way to ethically stop the moral slide down the slippery slope on this "what is life and when does it start?" question.

In a deeper sense however Dr. Leader is very very wrong. We DO have an ethical framework that governs all sorts of criminal and legal activities but for political purposes has been removed from the area of abortion because it infringes on the sexual freedoms of Canadians. That framework lies behind why it is stilll illegal for me to steal Dr. Leader's BMW. It lies behind why it is still against the law to lie under oath in court or to a representative of the Crown. That framework even lies behind gay marriage... even if that marriage is between two men or two women, it is still defined as a union between two committed life-long legally bound together companions... an idea that comes from the Bible, at least partially.

So Dr. Leader we DO have an ethical framework for which to judge these cases. It is the teachings of the Old and New Testaments on the importance of life beginning at conception and its inherent sacredness. But because requiring sexually permissive Baby Boomers to have the children they conceived was considered too great a burden on their freedom, Pierre Elliot Trudeau opened the door to abortion-on-demand in 1969 and the Supreme Court kicked it right in in 1988.

When Dr. Leader's BMW has more protection under the law than 1000s of unborn Canadians frozen awaiting either their annihilation or experimentation... something is deeply, deeply wrong in Canada.

But will the Church of Christ and its members say or do anything about this situation? Remember what Edmund Burke said "All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."