One of the city's finest writers, Nat Hentoff, has been at the
Village Voice for more than 50 years. While one can label this
publication as a left of center staple, the award-winning Mr.
Hentoff is much harder to categorize. Earlier this month, the
Human Life Foundation honored him with its Defender of Life Award
and in his acceptance speech he identified himself as "a
Jewish, atheist, civil libertarian, pro-lifer."
There is a big distinction between being merely anti-abortion and
being pro-life. Mr. Hentoff has consistently been a defender of
all human life, whether it be a Baby Doe or a Terry Schiavo, and
while I can differ with him on subjects like the Patriot Act and
the death penalty, I do not know of anyone more principled or
morally pure on this particular issue.
How I wish the award ceremony had been televised on C-Span or
elsewhere so that the nation could have heard the warning hurled
by the man who introduced Mr. Hentoff, Wesley Smith. Mr. Smith is
a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in California who is a
consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and the
International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.
He asked: "Does human life have ultimate intrinsic value,
simply and merely because it is human?" Traditionally, the
philosophy of America has been to answer this question in the
affirmative. However, Mr. Smith said, a growing number of voices
these days are responding in the negative: "They claim that
being 'human' isn't what gives moral worth, it is being a
'person.'"
Mr. Smith continued: "The Princeton University bioethicist
Peter Singer has claimed there are two crucial characteristics
that earn a human being or an animal the status of 'person,' and
they are rationality and self-consciousness. Singer claims that
some animals, (whales, dogs, cats, pigs, etc.) can be considered
persons; while other forms of life are not persons, including all
unborn human life, newborn human infants, people with advanced
Alzheimer's or other severe cognitive disabilities because they
are not self conscious or rational."
I had been aware of Mr. Singer's theories, which justify
infanticide and involuntary euthanasia of cognitively disabled
people, but what I found highly disturbing in Mr. Smith's speech
was the idea that Mr. Singer is being roundly applauded by other
bioethicists for voicing pragmatism at the expense of human life.
More and more intellectuals and medical scientists are posing the
question, "Do we have a duty to die?" In other words,
shouldn't we kill ourselves rather than be a burden to others
when we become ill or just plain old? Baby boomers - are you
listening? There's a brave new world out there, but more and more
it resembles the Third Reich.
Mr. Hentoff recognized how this culture of death is escalating in
this country during the Schiavo case. When he accepted his award
he spoke of how during the extensive coverage of the case, those
who were most closely concerned with it were totally ignored. He
spoke of the 29 national disability rights organization that
filed legal briefs and lobbied Congress to demonstrate that
Schiavo was a disability-rights case, not a right-to-die case.
Instead, attention was focused on the Christian Right and other
religious pro-lifers.
Mr. Hentoff also urged us to see the film "39 Pounds of
Love." It's a documentary about Ami Ankilewitz, an
American-born Israeli who at the age of 1 was diagnosed with a
rare form of muscular dystrophy. He is immobile, except for one
finger, which he uses to work as a 3-D animator. Although his
doctor predicted that he'd die before the age of 6, he has
survived for more than 30 years and is considered a medical
miracle. He's a truly inspiring individual, but one who would
probably fail to impress the Peter Singers of the world.
Mr. Hentoff used to belong to the ACLU, but he has accused the
once respectable civil libertarian organization of "engaging
in a minuet of death" by litigating in favor of ending the
lives of the most vulnerable in society.
It was from a Nat Hentoff column that I learned of the bombing of
a Catholic kindergarten by the Sudanese government. If there are
attacks on the innocent anywhere, we can be sure that Mr. Hentoff
is there fighting the good fight.
Mr. Smith said it best. "For decades he has connected the
dots for his vast audience, expertly charting the consequences of
our steady, but not always slow, slide down the slippery slope
toward a veritable culture of death."
Mr. Hentoff is the best proof that you don't have to be religious
to be pro-life.