Imagine a 20 year old woman. She discovers much to her displeasure that she is pregnant. She is firmly committed to the secular humanist view that she is in control of her life and her body, and so she decides to end the pregnancy, thus saving her from the burden of caring for a child while she finishes her schooling.

Five years later and now married, she discovers that she is once again pregnant, and almost simultaneously, experiences the near death and "miraculous" recovery of her father from injuries sustained in a car accident. She and her husband have a profound spiritual awakening and conversion. She develops a deep religious faith.

Five years later she and her husband cradle their dying daughter. Medical science offers a glimpse at recovery, but the procedure violates the faith of the family. Laying aside the secular mantra that what "might" be done "must" be done, the family places itself in the care of their God, knowing that death might very well occur, but that even if it should occur, death is not the ultimate end. They know that if death ensues their little girl will be safe in the arms of God, warm and secure and no longer subject to the inhumane place this world has become.

Now, as a 20 year old this woman would be cheered and blessed by the social liberals as the sole arbiter of her own truth. Even though a human life is extinguished there is no repercussion, in fact the government will pay for the procedure due to the woman's financial situation. Get your ideology out of my personal life, they cry. Three cheers for the modern self-made woman.

As a 30 year old the woman is made to wear a black hat as the modern Salemites parade her before the town square on their way to the dungeon, or worse, the gallows. "Murder, murder MURDER", they cry. Its the states responsibility to impose our ideology on your private life, they scream. How dare you have the brazen attitude that you can make your own mind about your own private life?

What is the difference? Is the ending of a human life through abortion somehow more sacred than allowing a life to end because a parent has a profound and deeply held religious disagreement with the high priest of modern science?

Who is to be the judge and jury of such moral equivalence? Are you so morally perfect that you can impose your ideology on someone whose worldview is 180 degrees opposite of yours?

Just because a medical procedure is possible, does it thereby become mandatory? Upon whose decision? And based upon what authority?

I, for one, disagree with the decision of the parents. My faith informs me that God can work through the hands of a skilled physician just as surely as he can through the hands of a spiritual leader. But just as my faith informs me that these parents are wrong, my faith also informs me that I cannot use the sword to impose my beliefs upon them through coercion and punishment. I am called upon to teach, to encourage, to inspire and to set an example; but in no way am I authorized to persecute those who disagree with me.

It seems to me that those who are calling for the prosecution of these parents sit at the feet of a far more vengeful god than my God has ever been accused of being. And that says quite a bit about their god.

Freightdawg