COMMENTARY: Court rulings at war with individual conscience

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(AT)compuserve.com.) (RNS)-America’s moral fabric is being destroyed by court […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(AT)compuserve.com.)

(RNS)-America’s moral fabric is being destroyed by court decisions that allow life to be ended in its earliest stages and hasten the moment of death for the terminally ill. As a result, a growing number of religious believers are finding it difficult to remain faithful to our nation’s laws.


Proof of this struggle is found in a remarkable editorial in the current edition of First Things, a journal of religion and public affairs. Writing on the recent ruling of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that upheld the right to physician-assisted suicide, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus raises this startling idea:”If the decision of the 9th Circuit is declared the law of the land,”he writes,”our public life will move from widespread alienation and protest to open insurrection.” Neuhaus hastens to add that no sensible person should welcome that scenario. In fact, he notes in his editorial, good can sometimes come of evil.

Outrage over the assisted-uicide ruling could prompt a constitutional amendment banning the practice, he writes. Or, the U.S. Supreme Court could reverse earlier decisions on which the 9th Circuit ruling was made-notably the 1992 Casey vs. Planned Parenthood decision, which declared abortion a personal and constitutionally protected moral choice.

Clearly, the twin issues of abortion and assisted suicide are the most divisive this nation has faced since slavery. And if the 9th Circuit’s assisted-suicide shocker one day becomes law nationwide, will America once again be divided? Will religious people stand with their consciences, or will they instead choose to live by laws they believe are evil?

Consider the reaction to President Clinton’s decision to veto the congressional ban on late-term abortions. In an extraordinary display of disgust, two Catholic cardinals joined a protest in front of the White House. Shortly thereafter, Raymond Flynn, Clinton’s own envoy to the Vatican, publicly distanced himself from the president’s decision.

Even the Vatican, which does not often become involved with internal policy matters, publicly assailed the decision.

What’s at stake here is the viability of our nation. Can a country that allows the murder of its children survive? Should it? The protest also underscores the crystallizing nature of this dispute, which is causing division not only in the secular realm, but within the churches themselves. The sheep and goats are parting company.

In what was not a great surprise, nearly 30 liberal Protestant and Jewish leaders, under the aegis of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, recently signed a letter endorsing the president’s veto.”We are convinced,”the letter says,”that each woman who is faced with such difficult moral decisions must be free to decide how to respond, in consultation with her doctor, her family, and God. Neither we as religious leaders, nor the president, nor the Congress-none of us-can discern God’s will as well as the woman herself, and that is where we believe the decision must remain.” This is a brilliant exposition of the differences between those who consider themselves orthodox believers and those who think of God as a”little voice”in each of us who would”advise”a woman that a baby four-fifths delivered can be exterminated while one fully delivered can be spared.


Those who believe this have faith in a fickle god, a deity made in man’s image, not vice versa.

But those who put their faith in revealed religion-not to be confused with self-revelation-find themselves increasingly in the same situation as our forebears who opposed slavery.

Slaves, like fetuses, were not officially recognized as being fully human. Those who were pro-choice on the issue basically asked to be left alone. In modern parlance, their argument was this: If you don’t believe in slavery, don’t own one. There was also a contingent of people who believed slavery was fully compatible with religious life, and in fact argued that point publicly.

But make no mistake: Opposition to slavery was primarily fueled by religious believers who finally could no longer abide the patent evil of one person owning another.

Contemporary believers, facing abortion on demand, assisted suicide and the courts’ unrelenting destruction of a legal code based on common moral assumptions, are increasingly being forced to choose between conscience and accommodation. And Neuhaus’ intimations of insurrection may not be idle musing.

LJB END COLSON

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