By Bonnie Finnerty, Education Director
Familiar to most people, the parable of the Good Samaritan seems to cut across all cultural and religious lines. Who among us, whatever faith tradition or lack thereof, would not help the stranger in crisis? Who would forsake the lost child, the thirsty traveler, the injured victim? Responding to the needy is not a moral imperative relegated to Christians alone, but is embedded in the instinct of every person. We are “wired” to defend and protect the vulnerable, recognizing the inherent value of all human life. They are us. We are they.
Ironically, in a recent debate, “Christian abortionist” Dr. Willie Parker twisted the parable of the Good Samaritan to defend his abhorrent practice. While he views the woman in crisis as deserving “compassionate care”, he fails to recognize the personhood of the child growing within her, although conceding it is a living human being. He sees competing interests, operating under the misguided notion that killing the unborn child “helps” the woman. Rather than allowing both to live, he creates a false dichotomy, choosing to extinguish the life of the weakest and most vulnerable. A Good Samaritan he is not.
In contrast, a long-running television show of my youth exemplified what it means to be a true Good Samaritan. Based on the events of the Korean War, M.A.S.H. dramatized the tragedies and triumphs of a mobile army surgical hospital. Army doctors treated our wounded soldiers so they could return to the battle lines or home to family. But Army doctors also treated enemy soldiers, working furiously to save their very lives. Our country enlisted medical professionals to save the lives of men who, only hours before, fought our soldiers in combat. Is that not the epitome of the Good Samaritan– seeing the humanity of our perceived “enemy” and doing everything we can to preserve his life?
All this illuminates why so many find the Congressional pro-abortion politicians’ repeated blocking of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act to be shocking to the core. A human baby, subjected to the violent act of abortion, manages to survive and is now separated physically from the mother. Clearly wounded, the infant struggles to overcome injuries inflicted by invasive medical instruments, which the child just might do with the benefit of medical intervention. The surviving child might be placed with one of thousands of couples waiting to grow their family through adoption. If injuries inflicted are too severe to sustain life, at the very least, palliative care can be given to the infant, making him comfortable and cared for as he draws his last breath.
Appallingly, all Democratic Senators (save for three, including our Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey) blocked legislation that would have required basic medical attention to an abortion survivor. In essence, these Senators voted to give legal protection to medical professionals who ignore the needs of a helpless, injured baby, allowing a viable child to suffer indefinitely.
Unlike the enemy soldier who was shot but then treated, these surviving babies are viewed as an “enemy” unworthy of any life-saving efforts. Outside of the womb, separate from mother, this is no longer abortion, but its inevitable consequence, infanticide. The in-born human instinct to help is callously over-ridden by an evil agenda of death-no-matter-what. The abortion survivor becomes the beaten man along the road, ignored by passers-by, with no Good Samaritan in sight.
And we are all the less for it.