State's New Abortion Regulations Are A First Step to Recovering Our Souls
BY BARBARA F. LAMBLIN Special to The Pilot Jun 10, 2023
The May 10 editorial in The Pilot aimed to vilify N.C. Republicans for passing the Care for Women, Children, and Families Act, and its thesis was the law is disrespectful to women and lacking common sense.
Sense is the ability to perceive, feel or derive meaning, and common sense infers most people have it. Regardless of your faith denomination, political affiliation or lack of both, human beings possess the ability to reason and from an early age understand right from wrong, beautiful from ugly, and bad from good.
Parents teach their children not to touch the hot stove because it will burn the child. They do not teach the child to touch the hot stove, understand the burn, and then learn from it. This is called common sense teaching or parenting. It does exist. Despite mainstream media's attempt to portray humans as beings who seek to harm and inflict pain on each other, this is not the mainstream truth.
The basic right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness entrenched in the Declaration of Independence commences with life. There is no other way to state that. Life is a right.
The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from depriving any person of the right to life, liberty or property without due process of law. The child in the womb cannot speak for him or herself and therefore is protected by these laws. If we are to call ourselves Americans, we commit to this fabric ensuring the protection of life and the knowledge that life commences when a man and a woman use their right to engage in behavior that conceives that life.
For as long as medicine has been practiced, the Hippocratic Oath, which is taken by all medical doctors, pledges to "prescribe only beneficial treatments, according to his or her abilities and judgment; to refrain from causing harm or hurt." The Hippocratic Oath pertains to human beings in their efforts to do no harm to other human beings. Let us step back and compare this to the laws protecting eagles.
The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act states that one may not "take, possess, sell, purchase, barter, offer to sell, purchase or barter, transport, export or import" an eagle, part of an eagle, or anything from its nest. This includes the eagle itself, dead or alive, feathers, eggs, and their nests. Within the boundaries of the act, "take" can refer to anything that disturbs or harms the bird.
This includes, obviously, harmful actions like shooting, poisoning, wounding, killing, capturing or trapping. When laws are passed protecting eagles, they are celebrated, but when laws are passed to protect the most fragile humans, they are called disrespectful and lacking common sense. This is beyond ironic and surely nihilistic.
This editorial called the new law less radical than other states' laws. Less radical? We need to be more radical. At this point in our culture, how can saving a human baby's life at any stage be radical?
How have we as a nation arrived at the point where it is common and natural conversation to talk about ending the life of a baby without feeling horror, the pit of our stomachs turning into nausea? We are desensitized by the lack of respect for life and each other, with not a modicum of intentionality and fortitude to love one another through challenges, difficult situations, and life's U-turns.
Ironically, the polling data showed 62 percent of North Carolinians supported the bill. The legislation contains tens of millions of dollars in funding for alternatives to abortion and initiatives intended to strengthen families, including $75 million to expand childcare access; more than $58 million to support foster care and children's homes; $20 million for paid parental leave for teachers and state employees; and $16 million, including matching federal funds, to reduce infant and maternal mortality.
C.S. Lewis wrote in "The Abolition of Man," "It is the magician's bargain: give up our souls, get power in return. But once our souls, that is ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be slaves of that to which we have given our souls."
The Care for Women, Children, and Families Act is a tiny first step to recovering our national soul and bestowing respect and common decency upon all life and to each other.
Barbara Lamblin is executive director at Life Care Pregnancy Center in Carthage.
READER RESPONSE
We would like to express our appreciation for the well-written, concise and cogent column "State's New Abortion Regulations are a First Step to Recovering Our Souls," by Barbara Lamblin.
She exposed the intellectual vacuity and total lack of common sense that abounds in the well-funded "prof-choice" conglomerate.
Choice? Who speaks for the unborn child?
The article provides strength to many religious and morally resolute seekers of wisdom, people who prefer to draw on the wisdom of their traditions, faiths and the great writers like C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesteron, Paul Johnson and Christopher Lasch.
No doubt Ms. Lamblin understands the umbrage and denunciation her views will elicit from the other side. We admire her courage.
Norvell and Theresa DeAtkine, Southern Pines