What is the value of every individual human life? And what determines that value? How you answer those questions will depend on your worldview. And it’s not just an arbitrary question but one with serious consequences, as one mother in the UK recently found out.
UK mom Soozy Jenner’s unborn daughter was tragically diagnosed with encephalocele, a rare neural tube defect, and Soozy was told “the baby wasn’t viable” (despite a strong heartbeat). She requested an MRI and a second medical opinion, but instead, the doctors reportedly booked Soozy an abortion to end baby Grace’s life.
And, according to her, they booked this deadly procedure without Soozy’s knowledge or consent. When she found out, she immediately declined killing her child, and she said that’s when “the attitude of the doctor changed immediately.”
“I was completely shocked,” she said. “I couldn’t believe someone would think it would be all right to have a termination because his view was that baby isn’t going to live and he automatically assumed I would take a termination. I refused it and after that nobody got in touch with me. I had to seek out that second opinion.”
Instead of violently ending her child’s life, Soozy carried Grace to term and was there to tearfully and lovingly say goodbye to her little girl when the baby passed away during labor. According to reports, she “does not regret her decision to treasure the limited time she had with baby Grace rather than having her life ‘terminated’ as suggested.”
What a different view of her daughter Soozy had than her doctor had! Her doctor saw no value to a life that may not live beyond delivery—in his view, such a life was so worthless it might as well be cut even shorter. And he obviously believed the mother would think the same way (sadly, many parents faced with a similar diagnosis do choose abortion), so he went ahead and scheduled a “death date” for Grace without even asking!
Yes, your answer to “what is the value of every individual human life” and “what determines that value” matters. If you have the secular, naturalistic, evolutionary worldview that dominates our culture today, your answer to the value of every human life will probably depend on the circumstances:
- How wanted is this person by others?
- Is the person born or unborn?
- Are they healthy or sick?
- Is this person able-bodied or disabled?
- What shade (many would incorrectly say “color”) of skin do they have?
But our value as human beings isn’t determined by a medical diagnosis or prognosis. It’s not determined by how wanted we are, how healthy or able-bodied we are, or what we look like on the outside. Our value is determined by the one who created us in his very image. And he says that we—including babies like Grace whose bodies are impacted so drastically by the reality of living in a broken world—are each knit together by him, fearfully and wonderfully (Psalm 139:13–14) right from fertilization. And our value as human beings was vividly demonstrated when God loved us so much that he sent his Son, the long-promised Messiah, to die a brutal death on the cross to pay for our sin.
John 3:16 KJV – “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
If we want to know how much value a human life has, we need only look at the cross and the suffering of our Savior in our place. Our culture says of unborn babies, “You will die for me.” Our Savior says, “I died for you,” and if we want to follow him, we’re to follow his example, pick up our cross daily, deny ourselves, and follow him (Matthew 16:24), including in serving any of the “least of these,” like little Grace and her precious months of life, that he brings into our lives.
