In an old tale, two young men decide to visit the village’s wise old man to ask a question he cannot answer correctly.
One held a small bird in his hands. “I am going to ask the old man ‘is this bird dead or alive?’ If he says ‘it is dead,’ I will open my hands and it will fly away. If he says ‘it is alive,’ I will squeeze the bird until it is dead.”
The old man came out to greet them. The one with the bird held out his hand and asked, “Old man, is this bird dead or alive?”
The old man looked at the young man. He looked at the bird and thoughtfully said, “It all depends on you, son. It all depends on you.”
And that is how it has been through the centuries: Life and death remain in the hands of the holder.
At one time many believed witches threatened their health, life and sanity. That belief held such sway that the Salem Witch Hunt in 1692 led to the loss of 19 lives in a few month’s time. Looking back from the perspective of 300 years, we wonder that they could so quickly convict and kill so many for witchcraft.
C.S. Lewis touched on this in “Mere Christianity” “the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did – if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbors or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: There is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.”
At one time, Great Britain and America believed slavery was essential to their national, economic health. Slavery ended in England when a few men, including Wilbur Wilberforce, ceased to believe that line of reasoning. They found the practice reprehensible and fought to change its legal status. The movie “Amazing Grace” depicts the political struggle to end slavery in England. After many years of debate, those in power voted to release the slaves to fly away into freedom.
Today the fate of an unborn child hinges on the grip of the laws surrounding them. Legally, this invisible person has no legal status to protect it from being crushed in the hands holding its life. Yet, when the one holding the fetus terms it an unborn person, they expect astounding medical feats to sustain the child’s life and protect the rights it will after it becomes a visible person.
In the past, a mother looking at her now grown, unplanned child might say, “She is the best thing that ever happened to me.” But, in the film “The Ultimate Gift,” one passing line reflects today’s mindset: Alexia, an unwed mother, speaking of her school-aged daughter Emily says, “She is the best decision I ever made.”
A school-aged child was “a best decision” only because modern society chooses to believe each conception awaits a decision. Legally, we do not agree, “A person’s a person, no matter how small,” as Horton says in the book and movie “Horton Hears a Who.”
Nothing changed for this person other than the belief and legal practice of treating such a small person as a piece of property or a decision.
In Salem, the community’s leaders quickly disposed of neighbors convicted of witchcraft.
Before the end of slavery, slave traders used the ocean to dispose of the bodies of men, women and children who died before they reached the slave auctions in America.
Today thousands of children around the world have been slipped out of their mothers into the medical disposal system.
In the 1600’s witches posed a communal inconvenience. In the 1700’s and early 1800’s many argued the inconvenience of ceasing slavery for economic reasons. Today, an unborn child ceases to exist when it inconveniences someone’s economic future, education, career, plans to travel or quest for additional luxuries.
A time will come – as it did with the witch hunts and slavery – when society will look back askance that so many believed any unborn child’s existence ever hinged on a decision of convenience.
Until that time comes – life and death continue to be in the hands of the holder.