Human dignity is not something we possess by mere visibility, nor is it a status granted by others. Christian anthropology notes that all people are God's image-bearers, a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory & honor. We don't bestow dignity. We recognize it.
This is true for the preborn and the incapacitated, the elderly and the impoverished. Christian anthropology, rooted in Scripture, resists the vandalism of all persons without reference to nation, faith, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, economic status, or 'utility'.
This view places us outside the circle of the Peter Singer set who certainly reject this Christian vision. Those who decry it sometimes call it into service when they feel threatened. On the other hand, many Christians don't understand the radical implications of it for...
... their own view of neighbors, the oppressed and marginalized, and as witnesses to the shame-destroying love of God that liberates and creates massive reversals of power, giving agency and voice to the once enslaved and silenced. When the Courts of any land...
...abandon an ethic of human life that is not rooted in this divine dimension, and instead posit utilitarian standards of what constitutes a life worthy of protection and the ascription of 'dignity', they inevitably create a tyrannical elite that will lightly toss aside humans...
... who don't meet their standards or conform to their views of what it means to be human. This was true of slave-holders in our past and it was true of Fascists and Marxists who murdered by their millions. It will always assert itself where champions of the truth retreat before
...ascendent relativism and grim scientism that with Malthusian disdain and fear, looks to 'decrease the surplus population', as Scrooge put it so well not so very long ago. While the answers in the law are not always easy, the starting point is: everyone matters.
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