You’ve probably seen the story. If so, your heart was filled with horror. You read of a mentally handicapped woman who’s somehow pregnant. (And hence, since she can’t consent, a rape victim.) She wants to have her baby. The baby’s grandma, a midwife, has offered to adopt him or her. But the British state wants to force the mom to abort. And as of yesterday, a British judge ordered her to endure a forced abortion. For her own good, of course, whether she likes it or not.

As National Review reports:

[Judge] Lieven argued that the mentally disabled woman, who is reportedly Catholic, would suffer mental distress from delivering the baby even if it were subsequently given up for adoption because “it would at that stage be a real baby.” At this stage of gestation, Lieven argued, the woman does not understand the implications of her pregnancy. “I think she would like to have a baby in the same way she would like to have a nice doll,” the judge said.

This news provoked a wave of horror among decent people around the world. Some pro-choice Britons were consistent enough to raise objections. Even the timid courtiers of the U.K.’s Catholic hierarchy emitted squeaks of disapproval.

And then we all felt relieved when a three-judge panel overturned the decision. For the moment, this mom will escape forced abortion. In Britain, the “Mother of Parliaments.”

Socialism Requires Abortion, Eugenics, and Euthanasia

I suspect that British elites realized that they’d overplayed their hand. It was just a little too early to impose this sort of thing. Enough people still live who flew RAF planes in the Blitz to defeat a regime built openly on eugenics and euthanasia.

But insofar as Britain or any other country accepts socialism, it will sooner or later take control over birth and death. Any other policy is fiscally unsound. The heirs of Margaret Sanger will revive her idea of restricting reproduction by the “unfit.”

If the State takes responsibility for all, it also will claim control. And it’s just too costly to let handicapped women go around squeezing out children they can’t care for. The price of preserving pensioners in their older years on socialized medical care will be roundly condemned as “ruinous.” One-time Colorado Governor Richard Lamm’s old phrase will be trotted out again: The old will be faced with their “duty to die.” Fiscal conservatives will join hands with progressives in setting up Sanger’s “baby codes” and Lamm’s death panels. That’s just what happens when you treat human beings like worker ants or termites.

Human Nature: Wired Just One Way

Everything is connected. Not just sort of/kind of. Tightly and inexorably. In the body, your muscles affect each other like the strings that run through a puppet. So the best way to help carpal tunnel might be to loosen the lower back. Each action has a reaction, and straining something one place will put pressure on another.

It’s the same with politics, morality and freedom. Get the balance wrong in one area of life, and it will mess up another. God wired human nature a certain way, which no culture or politics can ever really short-circuit for long.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

The great British poet Rudyard Kipling captured this eternal sameness of man in my favorite political poem: “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.” Those “headings” refer to old-fashioned maxims or truisms once taught to British schoolkids. Call them the “clichéd” wisdom of the ages. Kipling writes:

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

…

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Ideologies that promise to transform human nature are lies people tell themselves, in the hope that if enough people compliment the Emperor’s wardrobe, it will keep his naked butt warm.

Socialism Needs a New Species to Work

Socialism in every form promises to create a new kind of human being. It can’t really work until he emerges, since it’s not built for the old, fallen type of man at all. The new “socialist man” will be unselfish, public-spirited, hard-working, creative, spontaneous and joyful. He won’t need incentives to do things. He won’t grab more than his share. He’ll forget the difference between “mine” and “thine.” He’ll be saintly, with no need for God.

Of course, all of this is nonsense. Socialist man is as much of a fantasy as Iron Man or the Übermensch. We must work with regular, lumpy, fallen people, as God made them and Christ redeemed them.

Socialism, defined as the State controlling the means of production, has failed everywhere we’ve tried it. Ex-socialists like David Horowitz and Joshua Murvachik have written thousands of pages explaining how and why.

You can no more run a society along socialist lines than you can raise cats as vegans, then teach them to sing Wagner operas.

Robert Owen’s voluntary socialist communes failed. The Nazi and Soviet and Chinese and Korean and Cuban involuntary socialist tyrannies failed too. Insofar as Britain adopted socialism, it slid into decline. You can no more run a society along socialist lines than you can raise cats as vegans, then teach them to sing Wagner operas. If you insist on torturing them into compliance, all you’ll really produce is misery … the only thing socialism has ever successfully manufactured, anywhere.

The Seamless Garment Is a Body Bag

I have no patience left with people who cite the dead slogan invented by Cardinal Roger Bernardin, a socialist prelate (and apparently, a gay predator): the “Seamless Garment.” They claim that you’re not “really” pro-life unless you’re willing to accept a socialist utopia. You can’t stop parents from killing their children for sexual convenience unless … you solve every social problem those parents might face, through government action. Unless the State is willing to take complete responsibility for a child’s well-being from cradle to grave, it can’t even outlaw murder.

But in fact, the exact opposite is true. A State which must pay the bill for every child, teen, adult and senior citizen will demand the right to control the costs. To restrict the “supply” of children from the poor. And pare back the longevity of costly elderly patients. Instead of people caring for their own families, saving for their futures, or turning to private charities, everyone will be equally subject to the dry commands of bean-counting government workers. Imagine society as one vast, filthy, inefficient DMV, where the bureaucrats wield over everyone the power of life and death.

The only garment that’s seamless is the cheap body bag where the State stuffs our human remains.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism.