A Pro-Life Family’s Hardest Question
An old college friend of Scott’s, someone he has known for more than 40 years, recently sent him a profound and sad email about his nephew. The nephew and his wife just had their first baby. Normally that would be a time for celebration, and it was, briefly.
But since birth, this child has had one disaster after another: organ failures, blood poisoning, oxygen deprivation. The list goes on and on. If you were to compile a list of everything that can go wrong with a child just before birth, during birth and shortly after, this poor baby girl would fulfill that list and come in at the top slot for the most problems you can imagine having.
Right now she can’t breathe on her own. She can’t eat on her own. If she were disconnected from life support, she would die almost immediately from all of her multiple organ failures.
Her mom and dad have been doing everything they know to do. They have tried everything. There have been at least four or five MRIs and all kinds of tests to figure out what is going on in her body that would cause her to shut down like this. As you can imagine, mom and dad are devastated. So is the extended family, because this is a very close-knit family, and a profoundly Christian and pro-life one.
Scott’s friend has always been pro-life. He has been a pastor and a missionary. A few years ago he spoke at a state right to life rally, and he has done great work helping pastors get involved in the pro-life issue. And the parents of this baby girl are profoundly pro-life.
Is There a Point Where Enough Is Enough?
But they are now having to face a question. Actually, there are two questions, and here is the first.
Does there come a point where you say enough is enough, and we are not going to subject this baby girl to any more traumatic medical tests and treatments? Is there a point where it is okay for the parents to say, “You know what, we’ve done all we know to do. We’ve prayed our eyes out. We’ve sought the Lord. We’ve had brothers and sisters in the faith praying for this baby, and it just isn’t working. Nothing we’re doing is working”? Is it okay at that point to say we are not going to continue with extraordinary means that aren’t working?
This would be very different, of course, if the extraordinary means were working. But in this case, sadly, they are not. And the parents are wrestling with the question of whether there comes a point where what is best for their little girl is to let her go be with the Lord.
Must Pro-Lifers Always Resist Death?
Some pro-lifers believe that a pro-life worldview means you will always resist death. You must always push back on it. You can never not push back on it. And if you do, you are guilty of the same crime Terri Schiavo’s husband committed in Florida over a decade ago, in “unplugging” his wife and letting her die.
This case is not like Terri Schiavo’s, and here is why.
Why This Is Not Terri Schiavo
Terri Schiavo was not dying. She was in what is called a persistent vegetative state, PVS for short. Depending on who you talk to, there were experts on both sides, but the consensus seems to have been that she was not going to come out of that persistent vegetative state. There were people on the ground who said she could communicate, that she responded to family members who communicated with her through touch and other means. Whatever the truth is there, here is what we do know. Regardless of whether she was responding or getting better, Terri Schiavo was not dying.
What she needed was food and water delivered to her so that she could have nourishment and hydration. When her husband disconnected the feeding tube and the hydration tubes, that is what killed her. She did not die from her underlying condition, which was being in a persistent vegetative state. People can live many years in that context. She died because the act of withdrawing the nutrition and the hydration killed her.
That is not the case with this little girl. She is facing an underlying pathology, an underlying collapse of all her vital organs. Just about everything that can go wrong is going wrong, and she is not responding to the heroic treatments her parents are trying to bring to bear on her behalf. What is destroying this little girl is not her parents doing something that intentionally and directly causes her death. She is dying from her underlying condition.
Always Care, Never Harm
So what does it mean to say we will always care and never harm? That is the biblical and Christian ethic in these cases: we will never harm, and we will always care.
But what does caring look like in this context, where the child has multiple issues going on and would literally die within minutes if the technology were disconnected? She can’t breathe on her own. She can’t swallow. She can’t eat. There are all kinds of blood issues going on, and her blood has to be constantly purified. Her organs are failing. What does it mean to care in that situation? And does a pro-life worldview require that we always resist natural death?
Withdrawing Treatment That Isn’t Working
Euthanasia is obviously out. So is doctor-assisted suicide, if this were an end-of-life question, because both involve intentionally killing an innocent human being.
But this is a different question. The parents are asking when it is okay to withdraw treatment that isn’t working, that isn’t helping the patient. Are we obligated to keep on trying indefinitely with treatment that doesn’t appear to be working?
Scott would never tell them they should stop now. But if they were to come to that conclusion on their own, he would counsel them this way: You have not failed your daughter. You did not abandon her. You did not kill her. Given the situation in front of you, where none of the treatments and none of the medical technology were working to make her better, you decided there was a point where you were no longer going to subject her to traumatic medical intervention that wasn’t working on her behalf.
These parents are not abandoning a child. This is not Terri Schiavo, where her husband wanted her dead and the means he used to accomplish it was withdrawing her food and water. What is happening here is that the child is dying from her underlying conditions. It is very sad and very tragic.
Scott saw a picture the day before the show of the father holding his daughter. These parents are starting to bond with their little girl, and you can only imagine what that must look like. Nevertheless, they are having to deal with the question: could caring mean that we are not going to subject our little girl to any more medical trauma? The answer is yes. They would still be caring for their child if they made that decision.
That is not the same as abortion, where you intentionally kill an innocent human being through a direct act. These are parents deciding that heroic measures are not helping their little girl, and that the best way to care for her at this point is to say goodbye and let her go be with the Lord. That thinking is understandable, and it does not make the parents evil.
The pro-life worldview does not say we must always resist natural death. It does say we will always care and never harm. We will never intentionally kill an innocent human being through abortion, through doctor-assisted suicide, or through euthanasia. We will not do it.
But whether it is at the end of life, because we are old and dealing with multiple diseases, or at the beginning of life, with a child in the NICU who has multiple issues going on, where it appears that none of the things being done will help her, a pro-life worldview can say: we’ve done all we can do here. We’re going to stop now, and we’re going to let our daughter go be with the Lord. If the parents decide to do that, they have not violated a pro-life ethic.
Not a Judgment on Her Life
Notice one other thing. These parents are not making a value judgment on their child’s life.
They are not saying, “If she were to survive, there are probably many things she would not be able to do. She would not be able to function like other kids. Therefore her life has less value than a healthy baby’s.” The parents are not thinking that at all. In fact, they love this baby and would love nothing more than for her to recover and at least be able to survive. And they would love her whatever the results of the trauma she has suffered.
They are not saying this child’s life is worth less than other children’s. They are deciding that the treatment is not working and doesn’t show promise of working, and therefore they do not wish to subject their daughter to any further heroic means. That is a pro-life ethic in play. That is parents doing godly things and thinking about how they can best care for their child. That doesn’t make them bad.
Some pro-lifers have asked whether being pro-life means we will always, no matter what, resist death. The answer is no.
Our Hope Is a Resurrected Body
Some of you may have loved ones and family members nearing the end of life. As Christians, our ultimate landing place is not a healed body. It is a resurrected body, a body no longer subjected to pain, sin, decay and death. That is our ultimate destiny, and as Christians we have that hope.
So there is nothing wrong, when disease is overtaking a body and somebody is not getting better, with saying, “You know what? Enough is enough. We’re going to let them go be with the Lord.” That is not sinful. That is not a violation of a pro-life ethic.
Now, if you try to kill them, if you engage in doctor-assisted suicide, or say, “I think they’re suffering, their quality of life isn’t what it should be, and therefore I think we should assist them in having an exit here,” that would be sinful, because now you are intentionally killing an innocent human being.
Pray for Baby Ann
Do pray for that family. We are calling her Baby Ann. Her real name is not being given out, for the sake of the family’s privacy. If you think of her, pray for her, and pray for the parents. You can only imagine how hard this must be for them. Pray that the Lord would give the family wisdom and comfort. And if it is in the Lord’s heart to heal this child, if that is his will, then by all means we would love for that to happen.
From the Mailbag: Equal Protection
An equal protection advocate left a comment on one of our sites, taking issue with something Scott said in a previous broadcast. She wrote: “Scott, you have even said that you believe that those who wrote the letter that helped stop Louisiana’s Equal Protection Bill in 2022 were right to do so.” And yes, Scott did say they were right to do so.
A little background. In 2022, members of the Louisiana House put forward what is known as an equal protection bill. It would have banned abortion from conception and would have allowed mothers to be prosecuted for murder if they aborted. There were other problems with that bill too, and we’ll get to those. Pro-life groups opposed it. They actually wrote a letter saying they would like this particular piece of legislation not to be enacted, and they worked to defeat it. Equal protection advocates have been very bitter about that ever since. They feel betrayed by the pro-life movement, and they believe the bill would have become law had it not been for pro-lifers.
She went on: “Can you tell me when Abraham Lincoln was presented with the opportunity to constitutionally abolish slavery and instead campaigned against the Thirteenth Amendment because he believed equal legal protection should not be enacted? Instead, Lincoln did the opposite. When the opportunity to actually accomplish abolition came, he fought extraordinarily hard to get the 13th Amendment through Congress.”
Then: “Can you tell me when William Wilberforce was faced with legislation that would actually abolish slavery and instead urged Parliament to defeat it because he believed abolition itself should not be enacted into law?”
What Lincoln Did Not Do
Start with Lincoln. Here the commenter is conflating the 13th Amendment with the 14th. The 13th Amendment banned slavery, or if you prefer, abolished slavery, but it did not enact equal protection. That came later with the 14th Amendment, which was introduced to Congress a year after Lincoln’s death and wasn’t ratified until three years after he had died.
Yes, Lincoln did fight extraordinarily hard for the 13th Amendment. She is right about that. But he was never in a position to enact equal protection. And here is what is crucial: Lincoln did not push for equal protection when he didn’t have the support to go for it, because he knew that if he pushed for equal protection, support for the 13th Amendment would collapse.
Lincoln had to cobble together a very thin majority just to get the 13th Amendment across the finish line. If he had added equal protection categories to that amendment, the moderates and conservatives who were supporting him would have bailed on him, the slaves would not have been freed, and slavery wouldn’t have been banned.
Lincoln was smart enough to know he didn’t have the votes to do that. He had his sequencing right: let’s free the slaves, and we’ll come back another day for what we want to do later with equal protection. That is a smart way to think, and it is exactly how pro-lifers ought to approach things today. We ought to pass legislation that will save lives now, and come back later and debate what the legal penalties should be for women who abort. Lincoln was a master at getting what he could and coming back later for more. As you’ll see in a minute, Wilberforce was the same way.
Bills That Put Lives at Risk
Instead, equal protection advocates are pushing bills right now that put unborn children’s lives at risk.
Think about it. We are losing ballot initiatives in red states like Montana, Kentucky, Missouri and Ohio. We’re in trouble in Idaho, and we’re definitely in trouble in Nevada coming up. These are states that voted red in the last election, and some of them are quite red, like Ohio, Montana and Missouri. These are not liberal hotbeds. They are conservative states, and conservative voters are writing abortion into their state constitutions. Why? Because the marketing approach of our opponents is very effective.
They have trained the public to think that pro-lifers hate women, want them to die, want them to be denied medical treatment and want them to be prosecuted as murderers. In other words, they have successfully embedded the lie that pro-lifers hate women and want the worst for them.
In that kind of environment, is it wise or prudent to advance bills where we say our number one legislative strategy is going to be to pass laws that tell the public we want to prosecute women for murder? That is not wise at all.
The equal protection advocates will respond by saying they don’t want to punish women, and we can believe them on that. Maybe they don’t. But here’s the thing. You have to think about more than just what you want. You have to think about how the media spins this. This will be spun as pro-lifers hating women, wanting them to be denied medical treatment, wanting them prosecuted, and quite frankly, wanting them to die. That lie resonates, and that is why in red states we’re seeing these ballot initiatives enacted into law.
A better move would be to pass legislation where we can build the coalitions we need to pass it. We can draw in marginal pro-life voters and moderate voters who will at least consider that there should be some reasonable protections for unborn humans, and they would join us in saving lives. But they are not going to join us if we are perceived as hating women. That is the risk we run, the same risk Lincoln would have run if he had tried to write equal protection into the 13th Amendment. He was smarter than that.
What Wilberforce Actually Did
The commenter wants to know when Wilberforce opposed abolition and urged Parliament to defeat it. Scott can tell you exactly when Wilberforce did that, because he wrote the bills she is talking about. It was William Wilberforce who penned general abolition bills year after year.
Here is the lesson Wilberforce learned. There was a timing issue involved. Even though he was an abolitionist in principle, there were times when it was best to defer his general abolition bills, which he did between 1800 and 1803, and again in 1805, to cite just two examples, because he realized the timing was not correct. He learned that if he deferred his bills at those moments, he actually had a better chance of coming back later and getting what he wanted.
That is how we know he faced this legislation: he was its author. But he prudently deferred it when the timing was not correct, and he did that more than once.
What ended up happening is that when Wilberforce got behind what some would call incremental bills, for example bills that banned the slave trade in certain parts of the world but not all of it, those victories did not teach the culture a bad lesson, that it was okay to set aside some slaves and deny them freedom while others got it. Wilberforce realized that political victories build momentum toward the ultimate goal you’re aiming at.
When Wilberforce supported the Attorney General’s 1805 abolition bill, for example, it fell far short of general abolition, and it didn’t even fully ban the slave trade. But getting that bill through Parliament built the momentum needed to go back and ask for more another day. You see Lincoln doing that, and you also see Wilberforce doing it.
The Louisiana Bill Was Never Going to Become Law
One more thing. This bill in Louisiana was never going to become law. It is simply untrue that pro-lifers were the ones who primarily sabotaged it.
The governor had already vowed to veto it. He said the bill was unconstitutional because it told the legislature to defy federal law by disregarding the federal courts. Roe v. Wade and Casey were the law of the land at the time, and this bill told them to shelve it and forget it. On top of that, it said that judges who enjoined the equal protection legislation could be impeached or removed. There was no chance, not a snowball’s chance, that the governor was going to sign this bill.
What happened was equal protection advocates ill-timed that bill. They pushed an ill-timed piece of legislation and then blamed pro-lifers for it. That is not the best or most accurate way to look at that bill.
What we see from history is prudence in social reformers with a sense of timing, prudently introducing their legislation. That is the model for us moving forward.
Thanks to the person who wrote. We appreciate her comments, and we try to read them as often as we can.