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from http://www.thechristianactivist.com/new/compat.htm

Senators Sarbannes and Snowe Betray the Moral Heritage
of the Orthodox Christian Faith

Johannes L. Jacobse


Recently the United States Senate voted to ban partial birth abortions.
Senators Paul Sarbannes (D-MD.) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) voted against
the ban. President Bush promised to sign the legislation (former
President Clinton twice vetoed the measure) that would end this gruesome
practice.

A vote against a ban is a vote for infanticide. Consider what the
procedure entails.

During a partial birth abortion, a near term baby is delivered feet
first until every part of the body except the head is exposed. With the
head remaining in the birth canal, the doctor inserts a pair of scissors
into the soft tissue at the base of the skull and carves out a small
hole. A suction tube is inserted into the hole and the brains of the
child are sucked out. The dead child is then pulled completely out of
the mother.

The procedure constitutes a grave offense against the sacredness of
life. There is no medical reason to kill a child that would emerge alive
from the womb just a minute or two later. Senators Sarbannes and Snowe
disagree-enough at least to allow this barbaric practice to continue.

These Greek Orthodox Senators, like their liberal Roman Catholic
counterparts, defend their position by drawing a line between private
morality and public policy. They believe that moral precepts drawn from
Christianity should not shape their views on public policy.

Such a privatization of faith, writes Princeton scholar Robert P.
George, "would have puzzled-even shocked-men such as George Washington,
Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt." If Lincoln privatized
religious faith, he would not have freed the slaves. If Martin Luther
King privatized religious faith, blacks might still be sitting sit at
separate lunch counters.

George writes that the privatizing of religious faith entered American
political thinking during the Nixon-Kennedy campaign in 1960.
Protestants were fearful that a Kennedy victory would mean that the Pope
would have undue influence in American policy (the Pope had no such
interest). Kennedy, seeking to quell Protestant fears, assured voters
that his Catholic faith would have no bearing on his public decisions.
Roman Catholic bishops, not wanting to spoil a possible Kennedy victory,
remained silent. Kennedy won and the doctrine took hold. It has guided
liberal legislators ever since.

It is true that the Church should not run the State, just as the State
should not run the Church. Both must respect the legitimate authority of
the other. However, there is a world of difference between recognizing
these two arenas of authority and divorcing morality from public policy.

The support of partial birth abortion clarifies George's point. The
defense of the procedure arises from the muddled reasoning that began
with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that nullified all
state regulation of abortion. The Court ruled that abortion was legal
because the unborn child is not "viable"-a term they defined as being
able to live outside the womb independent of any aid.

"Viability" is a seriously flawed concept but it shaped abortion
politics for the next three decades. No person is able to live outside
of his natural environment. To require the unborn child to survive
outside of the womb is no different than requiring an astronaut to
survive in space without a space suit, or a diver to survive underwater
without air.

Further, viability does not exist on the biological continuum. Premature
babies that would have died a mere decade or so ago are kept alive today
as medical technology moves the line of survivability ever closer to the
time of conception. The justices erroneously concluded that viability
was a fixed point on that continuum-a criticism Justice O'Conner made
years later.

Viability removes the legal standing of the unborn. From there it's a
short jump to argue that the unborn are not human beings all-hence the
assertion that the unborn child is only "potential human life."

Viability rationalizes partial birth abortions in the same way. A child
that is not fully delivered before its brains are extracted remains in
the abortion rather than infanticide category so killing it remains
legal. Further, categorizing the procedure as an abortion maintains the
fiction that a child is not killed-at least in the mind of supporters.

Defenders of abortion realize that any restriction of the procedure will
shift moral awareness against them. If it is wrong to kill a partially
born infant, then why should it be right to kill an infant one minute
before its birth? How about two minutes? How about five? What biologists
knew all along is reaffirmed: human life develops along a continuum that
starts at conception.

A shift in moral awareness would also require leaders like Senators
Sarbannes and Snowe to reevaluate their uncritical support of abortion
rights-something they clearly refuse to do.

By privatizing religious faith, Senators Sarbannes and Snowe assume a
posture of moral neutrality but in fact betray the moral teachings of
the Orthodox faith. They substitute a moral vision that informs and
justifies a culture of death and become the advocates for it.

Copyright � 2003 Johannes L. Jacobse. Rev. Jacobse is a priest in the
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.