Dr. Will Johnston is president of Physicians for Life and in a short essay he concludes: “And still our world asks who to kill next.” This reminds me of two important observations about abortion and why, really, Pope John Paul II talked not about the abortion culture but the Culture of Death. As we note in the October issue, American columnist George Will repeatedly noted in the 1970s and ’80s that the issue is not a scientific one of when life begins but a moral one of when life becomes protectable. (As we note in one of our October editorials, we are headed in the wrong direction of offering less protection.) The second quote is from lawyer and bioethics expert Wesley Smith who has said that bioethics is all about figuring out who to kill and keep a clean conscience. As Dr. Johnston indicates, even as our world becomes more progressive and our technologies improve, the frontiers of killing expand rather than retreat.
