Why do I listen?
To NPR, that is. My wife, who is smarter than I am, listens to other things early in the morning, but I grew up in a rural area with few options. Morning Edition seemed like a good idea when I was in high school, but nearly every day I’ve listened for the past seven or eight years, I’ve been annoyed by some slant to some story. To wit:
On Wednesday, there was a conversion story, of sorts, by a woman who had been a raging feminist pro-abort but had experienced a change of heart. This was encouraging to hear on NPR. I was impressed.
Today, there was, during the same time slot, a commentary by Laura Nowak, who works in a neonatal ward in a California hospital. She talked about babies with severe birth defects. She believes that it is a mercy to end the life of a child who will be born with severe birth defects. She has a son who has crippling heart problems. She and her husband, she implies, wish they had chosen the “merciful” way out since they can’t do it now (at least she’s saner than Prof. Singer). This woman continues to talk about abandoned babies, unwanted babies, and, especially, babies who will die anyway. Here’s where her logic skews.
Since babies born with awful diseases, malformed organs, etc., are destined to die within a few months of birth, it’s a mercy to kill them in the womb, she avers.
The problem with this is, of course, that every child is going to die. You were a child once, and so was I, and we all must face death. Mrs. Nowak does not seem to understand this, because she makes sweeping statements about the quality of life and whether it is cruel to expose a child to hospital stays, surgeries, etc., before an inevitable death.
My response to that: Is it cruel to raise a child up, lavish money and time on him, and watch as he becomes alcoholic and dies early of liver problems? How about the same child who becomes a dirt farmer, custodian, trash-man? Teacher? (Yes, that one’s really pushing it.) Should everyone who is not destined to be a billionaire playboy be euthanized? Can you judge the quality of another man’s life?
Suffering brings grace. We, as Catholics, understand that. Life is a gift from God. We also understand that.
Thank God.