Newborn on scale (from here)

An infant is small and tiny. All a baby does is suck, gurgle, sleep, mess its diapers, and cry. A baby is so helpless we cannot help referring to such a little one as an “it”. Yet our hearts go out to these little ones. Don’t our hearts know they too are made in the image of God? Therefore, when Democrats blocked the passage of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection bill, one blogger titled her post this way, What Possible reason ..?

Senator Ben Sasse made a simple case for his bill.

This isn’t about restricting access to abortion. We’re talking about making sure that newborn babies are treated with dignity and receive care whether they’re born in the maternity wing or an abortion clinic. This is the bare minimum in humane treatment.

Monday’s vote should not be difficult. A lot of debates aren’t straightforward. This one is. Standing for the dignity of each and every human being — the very principle that all of us are created equal, even the littlest — should be every public servant’s first responsibility. Indeed, politicians remind us every day that their duty is to care for the poorest, and the weakest, and the most marginalized members of our society. (from here (foxnews.com))

All of us are created equal? Sounds absurd, does it not?

Yet that phrase, that “all men are created equal”, comes from the Declaration of Independence, the founding document of our nation. As Everett Piper has written, in The consequences of a good idea (washingtontimes.com), a good idea can have astounding consequences.

Today I want to highlight a good idea rather than one that is bad; an idea that was born on the streets of London exactly 212 years ago.

The promoter of this idea was a young British Parliamentarian named William Wilberforce.

And what was his idea? It was frankly quite simple.

God is God and you are not.

Wilberforce believed all men and women were created equal. He argued that regardless of age, race, class, intelligence, or mental acumen, we all have unalienable rights granted by our Creator; that we all are made in the image of God; that slavery, which was the backbone of the British economy at the time, was the desecration of such an image; and that when anyone elevates himself or his group over another he is claiming to be God. (from here (washingtontimes.com))

It took him twenty years, but Wilberforce led the movement to end slavery in the United Kingdom and its domains.

Another man, Abraham Lincoln, pointing to the same phrase, “all men are created equal”, ended slavery in the United States. Lincoln explained his reasoning in his debates with Senator Stephen Douglas. Here is an excerpt that explains what Lincoln thought the signers of the Declaration of Independence intended.

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal-equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.

“They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all: constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, every where.” (from here)

Citizen Tom provides more details on Lincoln’s reasoning in his series on the Lincoln – Douglas Debates of 1858. Here are the pertinent links.

• AN EXAMPLE OF BIGOTRY — PART 5
• AN EXAMPLE OF BIGOTRY — PART 6

So what about today? We are still fallible men and women. We still struggle with the idea of God, to know Him and obey Him. We still struggle to do right and refrain from wrong. Therefore, some people still prey upon the weak and helpless.

Is a newborn baby made in the image of God? Is a newborn entitled to the protection of the Law? What do you think? Why? Have you let your political leadership know what you believe?