This characterization of the many facets of being pro-life is so brilliant I wish I could say I thought of it. Scott Rae, in an interview with John Stonestreet at BreakPoint.org, brings the pro-life movement into the 21st century in an attempt to get us all to wake up to the perils we are facing.
Rae describes three progressions of pro-life issues:
- Pro-life 1.0 deals with “the taking of life.” Abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia
- Pro-life 2.0 deals with “the making of life.” Artificial insemination, IVF, surrogacy, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, egg and sperm “donation”
- Pro-life 3.0 deals with “the remaking of life.” Genetic engineering, human enhancements, nanotechnology, human cloning, transhumanism
Brilliant, simple, easy to understand. (Did I say I wish I came up with it?)
Rae is Christian, not Catholic, but his comments apply to us as well. He says most of us are super familiar and on board with pro-life 1.0 issues. But moving to pro-life 2.0 issues, many do not understand why they are important. We can see the gift of a child to an infertile couple, but the dark-side of the fertility industry, the mass production, commodification and destruction of life, remains hidden.
And pro-life 3.0? Forget it. Every time I write about genetic engineering, human augmentation or transhumanism, I know I will be bombarded with comments from well-meaning Christians who really cannot see the difference between using technology to heal our bodies and using it to enhance our bodies in ways our Creator never intended. Many Christians do not see pro-life 3.0 issues as extensions of the 1.0 and 2.0: the rejection of our biology in favor of “choice” and the rejection of the inherent value in simply being human.
In addition, I believe many Catholics think that pro-life 3.0 issues are science fiction that are hundreds of years away. Easily ignored for the easier pro-life 1.0 issues.
I recently reviewed Ray Kurzweil’s transhumanist manifesto, The Singularity is Near, where he describes the human body version 2.0. The human 2.0 will be mostly “non-biological” with all of our major systems, nervous, circulatory, immune, digestive, and respiratory augmented or replaced by nanotechnology. Nanobots will allow us to perform Olympic pace sprints for 15 minutes without taking a breath, eat whatever we want without gaining weight, have super-fast, limitless cognitive skills, summon a virtual reality, including a virtual lover, at will, and have a “back-up” of our consciousness ready if needed. We will never get sick and, most importantly to Kurzweil, we will never have to die.
And while many disagree with Kurzweil’s time-line, he estimates human 2.0 maybe a reality as soon as the 2030s. I don’t know about you, but I will be planning to retire and enjoying bouncing grandchildren on my knee. So pro-life 3.0 issues are likely issues not for our great-grandchildren, but for us in our lifetimes.
Now I love my faith and my fellow Catholics, but we are reactive not proactive. My mother, a soldier in pro-life 1.0 issues, told me about how her generation of Catholics ignored the abortion issue thinking legalized abortion would never happen. Then suddenly in 1973 abortion was the law of the land. Pro-life Catholics everywhere where reeling and wondering, “How did this happen?” We have spent the last five decades trying to fight this evil that has claims tens of millions of lives in the United States alone.
The same happened with pro-life 2.0 issues. An ounce of prevention may have been worth a pound of cure.
But we still have time to change the course of the 3.0 issues. We need laws now in the United States that prevent human cloning, germ-line genetic engineering and human enhancement experiments.
We cannot abandon the pro-life 1.0 and 2.0 issues, but we cannot ignore what is coming. It is time to be pro-life 3.0.
July 17, 2012 at 8:49 pm
I agree with what is written 100%. But in the end it is overwhelming to even the most dedicated. When Pro-lifers, whether 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0, keep demanding attention and money it is hard to not feel bombarded, and so retreat into prayer (admittedly not enough) and donations (admittedly not enough) to one or two pro-life organizations, and going to one or two rally's may be all that some of us can do. And sometimes we cannot even do that.
So our hope and trust just has to be in the Lord when it comes down to it.
July 17, 2012 at 8:50 pm
I should have said when pro-life organizations, whether 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0….
July 17, 2012 at 9:20 pm
"How did it happen?" In 01, when Jane Roe came into the Supreme Court and asked for the legalization of the destruction of the human life in her womb, that newly begotten soul ("their Creator" does not make human beings without souls)became the ward of the court to be protected. The Judicial Department shirked Justice to make sure that the baby died. That is how it happened. In 02, the sovereign personhood endowed into the soul by "their Creator" could be enslaved, manipulated and destroyed at will because the soul had not yet learned how to defend itself. The soul's human existence endowed with unalienable rights was denied. In 03, the human soul again loses in respect to being the human soul. The human being again loses in his quest for happiness as a human being, composed of body and immortal, rational soul. Transhumanism is the remaking of itself over into an unrecognizable creature, not subject to his soul, but to the technology of another person's will, not God's will, but another person's will who cannot love or redeem.
July 18, 2012 at 1:10 am
Time to break out A Swiftly Tilting Planet and reread.
July 19, 2012 at 7:50 pm
Good heavens, dying is the purpose of living. Why would I want to live forever? It would seem to me to be like purgatory without ever getting there.
When I speak out against 2.0, I'm considered "mean". Why would I want to criticize someone who did what they needed to to get the baby they wanted.
I explain that a big part of the problem is "they wanted", but they don't understand it as being a problem. They live in a "me first" world.
When I speak out against 3.0, people's eyes cross (except when I apply it to frankenfoods, then all of a sudder they're all ears).