The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness. -R.A. Heinlein

Monday, June 28, 2010

Sanctity of life

From AP:
Often, overtreating fatal illnesses happens because patients don't want to give up.
Saideh Browne said her mother, Khadija Akmal-Lamb, wanted to fight her advanced ovarian cancer even after learning it had spread to her liver. The 55-year-old Kansas City, Mo., woman had chemo until two weeks before she died last August.
"She kept throwing up, she couldn't go to the bathroom," and her body ached, Browne said. The doctors urged hospice care and said, "your mom was stubborn," Browne recalled. "She wanted her chemo and she wanted to live."
Browne, who lives in New York, formed a women's cancer foundation in her mother's honor. She said she would encourage dying cancer patients to choose comfort care over needless medicine that prolongs suffering.
You see, this is what happens when you try and create a perfect world without God. This is what happens when you start looking at people as society, and not image bearers of God. Step one is making it easier to cope with loss of life, either by saying there was never any real life, or their life is torture, and therefore not true life. They say, "Oh, it's not a baby, just some tissue," or, "They're just going to be in a vegetated state, no feeling or emotion." or even, "They're going to be in agony, it's better to end it now." This is evil.

God created us, and He has set a time for us to die. He has determined the number of our days, if we are still alive, it is only because He has let us keep breathing. He also created us, therefore, how can someone say it is their choice and right to determine if the unborn are allowed to live? No matter what the circumstances, God still allowed him or her to be created, and meticulously made them that way.

What is happening now, has happened before. History repeats itself, there is nothing new under the sun. Nazi Germany started off with their slaughter of the old by telling society that they were unneeded and not useful. That it was merciful to kill the sick and dying. This made it easier to allow the murder and slaughter of those without voice. 

Now, the problem I have right now is not with people giving up on life. That is their choice, and while sad, is still their choice. What I do have a problem with is that our country is headed towards a society where life is not highly valued. Where the government will control healthcare, and will decide weather or not you are worth letting live. Where it is "merciful" to let you die, or just outright kill you. Where before, you might have been able to afford the operation, it will now be to costly to the government. It should not be someone else's choice to determine if God is right in letting you live. A mere man cannot possibly see what God sees, and cannot possibly determine if it is time to go home. 

This has not come suddenly, it has been happening for sometime. The problem is, good people have not done enough to fight it. Darkness can never over come light. If the darkness is moving, it is because the light is not there. When have you ever opened up a door to a dark room and had the darkness put out the light? It doesn't happen. Darkness is not a force, it is the absence of a force. Evil is a bit different, in that it is a force, but still, it cannot stand up against God. If God is with us, who can stand against us? If we, the people of God, stand up for what is right, can evil stand against us?

Search your heart. Ask God what in your life is holding you back from following Him. If you feel called, then make a stand.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men nothing" -Edmund Burke

Saturday, June 12, 2010

It's not like EMTs are people or anything..

I was looking for Christian EMT courses and found this:

So basically, the author takes a story of an EMT who refused to take a pregnant woman to get an abortion, and through a very round about way, comes to the conclusion that Christians are a threat to the public health. Considering the late date of this post, I can only find articles about the lawsuit that followed (BTW, if you have articles stating otherwise, please send them to me as I would like the truth behind anything), but the story that I've gathered is that this was a woman who wanted the ambulance to take her to have an abortion, and an EMT said no on the grounds that it went against her moral beliefs. She was fired on the spot and another EMT took her place.

The author makes a case concerning a law that should have protected her from being fired which says something along the lines of, if you have a moral or religious objection concerning aiding a person, you do not have to aid them. He then has this to say:
According to Manion's reading of Illinois' "conscience clause," it really wouldn’t matter if the abortion were an emergency, would it? If Stephanie Adamson had a moral objection to transporting someone for an abortion, it wouldn't matter if the abortion were purely elective or absolutely necessary to save the woman's life — a moral objection is sufficient to allow her to refuse to lift a finger to save the woman's life. Questioning whether the abortion was an "emergency" strikes me as little more than an attempt to cast aspersions on the motives of the woman who was, he acknowledges, in pain and thus in need of medical treatment.
Even if we ignore this, though, the question is pretty easy to answer: not all hospitals offer abortion services and, even if they do, there might be someone else better qualified to either perform an abortion or to perform an abortion on women in particular medical circumstances. There are plenty of good medical reasons for why it might be necessary to transport a woman in pain from a hospital to a clinic where she can get an abortion. There are few, if any, good medical reasons for an EMT to refuse to transport a woman in such a situation. There are no good reasons — medical or moral — to give EMTs the right to let a woman die rather than drive her to where her life can be saved.
What I am gathering from this, is that he would like EMTs to be good little sheep following the herd, and doing whatever, without question. While 99% of the time, this is ok, you still have to watch out for that 1% of the time when there's something wrong and stopping it means going against the grain. Never mind my views on abortion, never mind my morals, making EMTs prosecutable by law for not giving a treatment ties their hands, makes them second guess themselves, and in general, turns people away from getting into this field to help others.

The EMT did not wish to assist in the murder of an innocent child. The author takes this, and turns it into, "Christian EMT workers allowed to let pregnant women die?" as he titled his post.

As for the abortion, is it denial of a womans right over her body to not let her abort? Well, if you are with the world, then yes. A world without God sees this and says, it is the woman's body, and it is the woman's life. She should be allowed to make the decisions about them both. From a biblical stand point, abortion is evil, no matter the circumstances. God doesn't make mistakes. Since before time, He planned what we would do, from birth to the grave. That means, even in cases of incest or rape, though they are pure evil, it is not right to abort. God can take an evil situation, like rape, and turn it into something beautiful, like a child. If someone decides to take the life of their unborn child, they are, without a doubt, committing murder.

Even our own society realizes that unborn children have value! If a person punches a pregnant woman in the stomach, and she miscarries, the person will (and should) be convicted of murder. However, there is a double standard. If a woman decides that she is not ready to have a child, she can go to a clinic, and have the baby burned alive with acid, and essentially suffocate to kill it. No matter what grounds they say, it is still evil. "It was the humane thing to do, I couldn't support it." "The baby was going to be missing a limb, I couldn't give it a life like that." God still created that child, why is it up to you, to decide whether or not the baby should live? The Lord has a plan for everyone, even those that society views as worthless. It is not up to us to make the decision of who lives, and who dies; especially when they cannot defend themselves.

Life's tough, being a parent's tougher, but with the Lord's help, you can do it. God will not give you a challenge you cannot face. Now, He will almost certainly give you challenges that you cannot face alone. That's what is so great about our God, He is always good, but He is not safe. He wants what is best for us, and He is willing to give us difficult, painful times to make us love Him more, and to make us grow. Nothing worth while will ever be easy. Following God is a constant battle. Battles are not easy, but I can tell you this, the battle is worth it. Looking back on my short life so far, I have seen times where I wanted something, and God didn't let me have it. Looking back, His plan was perfect. He brought me through, and was with me every step the way, with my best interest at heart.

With a God that good, how can we try and say that it would be better to not bring a child into the world who God has a plan for? No matter what the circumstances, God still has a plan, and though you may not see it (and normally you wont), it is heading towards something beautiful and great.