From the perspective of a healthy person and a former business owner, I have concluded that COVID has influenced our lives in a completely excessive way. Our response to the virus is disproportionate to the danger posed by the virus. And the astronomical economic damage now being caused is not commensurate with the damage caused by the virus.

This person, per our current law, is abortable. Why can’t we apply the logic we use to justify killing this person with others who are also at vulnerable stages of life?

Yet, bigger than my opinion on what I reference above is the blatant hypocrisy that our response to this virus has exposed with our values on human life and our moral authority to protect those who can’t protect themselves.  We are getting really low grades here.

At the core of our calculated response to shut down the economy and education system are two core assumptions:

• We should be preserving all life and must take a position of moral authority, without shame, to minimize the members of our most vulnerable population who get killed, and
• We must take steps, regardless of cost, to prevent overwhelming our health care system.

Let’s only look at the first point, as there is enough there to indict us all.  As I type this, COVID-19 has killed nearly 100,000 in the 4 months since the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy claims the first death attributed to it occurred. Certainly, there is reason to believe that the disease has been here longer than that, but our tracking only goes back till February.  Both the Johns Hopkins Folks and the New York Times show that daily death rate is decreasing, no one’s crystal ball has show evidence of credibility as to predictions of what the future holds. Keep in mind that speculation about the future is inversely proportional to knowledge, and our leaders and media representatives are doing a good job at proving this axiom.

We all believe 100,000 deaths is bad. We are led to believe that many (perhaps not most, though) are preventable if our leaders step in and do something.  We all have accepted the assumption that any efforts we can take as a society to reduce the number of deaths is worth it, regardless of the cost.  We have not only introduced social distancing and have submitted to a loss of social and professional gatherings, but we have also introduced social shaming and reprimands for folks who don’t follow what our leaders say after looking into their crystal balls.  Self-righteousness when wearing face masks in public and reprimanding others who aren’t practicing one flavor of social distancing is creating emotional responses that is making everyone’s mental health worse.

We are going to extremes to protect the elderly with our COVID policies. Why do we not protect the unborn with the same amount of fervor? Last I checked, every one of the elderly was, at one time, a fetus.

I state that our leaders asked us to implement these measures “without shame,” in that we inherently must believe we are protecting members of society who are at different stages and who are the most vulnerable.  Certainly, there are uprisings against the shutting down of business, but by far, the most common response is protect those who need the protection and do no harm.

The problem with our approach is that we have skipped the protection of our most vulnerable members in our self-righteousness and completely missed out on the harm that we are doing.

I have already commented in previous podcasts on the mortality associated with heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and repeated studies can be found with a simple search that there are research studies that show we can reduce our risk factors by doing simple tasks to care for ourselves.

Yet, I have not yet discussed the greatest of our “vulnerable” populations in a different stage of development, and that is our fetuses that get aborted.  This marginalized group is the one who most justifies a great reaction, as their mortality numbers are bigger than the most catastrophic of COVID mortality models.  Despite the great variability in the models proposed, I have read more than one or two claims that we could lose as many as a few million people globally to COVID-19.  I don’t cite a source, as there are too many of them.  By comparison, COVID-19 mortality numbers are statistically insignificant.  For perspective sake, in 2019, there were over 40 million pregnancies that ended in abortion worldwide in 2019.

We may have already killed the person who could find the cure/vaccine for COVID-19 already.

Life has stages to it, regardless of life form.  Just like part of a butterfly’s life is in the form of a caterpillar, everyone knows that for every butterfly that exists, there was once a caterpillar.  Human life begins as a zygote or fertilized egg.  It then progresses to fetus, then onto newborn, then toddler, then adolescent, adult, then elderly.  Every stage has all the pervious stages as precursors.  They all have names, and we all go through these stages.    No exceptions.  All these stages are part of life.

Following this trend, we only have a few “windows” in our lives when we are marginalized and in need of someone to help defend our rights  We need others to protect our rights when were in the fetus and newborn stage, as well as the elderly stage.  We are “all in” with the act of preserving our elderly, and data from multiple sources show that they are the most impacted by COVID-19. Yet, why don’t we protect our fetus with the same desire and drive that we are currently using to protect the elderly? I hear leaders calling for more thoughtful planning and consideration in retirement communities and hospitals, but not to protect the person like the one in the picture above.  It is hypocrisy.

The ancient arguments that “no one really knows when life begins” and the “its just a blob of tissue and not a person,” arguments have lost credibility in the context of recent surgical abortions. We now do anesthesia on fetus and perform surgeries on them, as well.  One large insurance carrier, Aetna, has created procedures and policies (Number 0449) that outline the details of fetal surgeries that are allowed for the child in the womb.  Our legal system tells us that you are either a person or property of a person.  Even the most fanatical supporters of abortion will be at a loss to call an unborn fetus that just underwent anesthesia and a kidney bypass a “piece of property,” or not a “person.”  These old arguments are more like flat earther comments now than those of an intelligent person.

Sure, many millions of women have aborted a child, and the pain, loss and emotional need to justify what was done is both strong and deep. This creates an invisible thumb on any honest scales that even the best logic and most heartfelt presentation will never persuade, mine included. But the inconsistency is apparent.  We either protect the vulnerable, indiscriminately, or we don’t. We should not pick and choose which marginalized members get our consideration. This policy of protecting the elderly and weak but not protecting our fetus is not getting the attention it deserves. The next time you catch yourself saying, “I am wearing this facemask to protect others, and it is my responsibility to act civil,” come to peace with the failure all around you of humanity failing to protect our most vulnerable members of society for a long time.