If human nature is not much more than modeling clay, and no permanent human nature exists by the hand of the Creator, then natural, unalienable rights can’t exist. And no human “rights” can finally claim priority over the interests of the state. – Archbishop Charles Chaput

The clip below shows a Planned Parent advocate unwilling to state that a living, breathing baby on a physician’s table has no right to be saved. The heartlessness on display is jarring. But also striking is the inability of the Florida legislators doing the questioning to articulate the source of their disgust.

We are a nation founded on the basis of inalienable rights with which we are endowed by our Creator, yet we’ve now handicapped our moral vocabulary to the point of speechlessness. A woman claims that a child laying on an operating table, begging for life with its cries, should have no expectation of being saved by those who could. Silence fills the room. The questioners have presumably made the determination that appealing to the Creator is off limits, and an argument derived from reason and natural law would lose the audience. So what’s left? Hoping the awkward silence will give those watching enough time to process the image and be shocked by the grotesque reality of it. But all they end up doing is giving their audience enough time to come up with a self-serving rationalization as to why letting that baby die is a necessary evil. In the face of moral monstrosity, dumbfounded looks have never sufficed.

Was that child not created equal? What of his inalienable rights? Has the woman pondered what she’ll say the day she meets God, and has to explain that she defended the convenience of a doctor over the life of a baby, the least of His people? We never get to find out.

“But you can’t legislate morality!” they’ll cry. Oh no? Continue reading →