Phyla

There has long been an unfortunate confusion between making distinctions of phylum and performing science. Science, of course, is the practice of determining natural laws via testable, falsifiable hypotheses. Science says that a bear has x number of chromosomes.

Making phylum, on the other hand, is a means of characterizing and speaking about our discoveries. It does not discriminate between true and false, testable or not testable, and falsifiable or not falsifiable, it merely shows that a distinction is conceivable. Thus the phylum "bear" is distinguished from others by a set of common characteristics not shared by outsiders. In turn, differences between individuals in the phylum "bear" are conceptually deemphasized.

This is not to say that making phyla is a bad way to look at the world.  It is pattern recognition that lies behind our capacity to learn, and it is this capacity that allows humans who, by necessity, possess different individual experiences, to communicate with one another. Without the ability to make phyla, we could not learn, and we could not speak: not without naming and knowing all of the individual things on the earth. However, in order to keep straight our phylum of "truth", we must keep in mind the distinction between the phyla "science" and "description."

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We know the genome and characteristics of both the unborn and the born. They have been studied in detail, at every step of the process.  The science of the abortion debate has therefore been done.

Where we draw the line between human and not-human is not, as is commonly believed, a matter of "science" but rather a matter of phylum. As a matter of phylum, this distinction, as others within its phylum, is less a measure of reality and more a means of communication. By looking at the phyla a person makes, we gain an insight into their values.

Despite vocal assertions to the contrary, pro-abortionists do not stand for science, but for licence and the dehumanization of the inconvenient. Many others have done likewise in the past few centuries: the Nazis; who defined humanity as Germanness, the Communists; who defined humanity as slavish obedience, and the Islamists; who define humanity as submission. The pro-abortionists define humanity as the convenient, that which doesn't get in their way. All else may be safely discarded as though it was nothing. But in the end, isn't that the same thing the Communist, National Socialist, and Islamic elites have done?

I, then, put forward this set as a useful phylum: that of the dehumanizers: the subset of humanity that is willing to ignore the dictates of conscience and take the lives of their fellow man to exalt themselves.By seeing the commonalities in their approaches, we can form a common response: to deny their frames, subvert their assumptions, and hold fast to the purity of truth.

Whatever we do, and however we do it, we must resist them. This is because they promote what the Church calls the "Culture of Death:" an assault on the dignity of man as God's likeness and image, and thus an indirect assault on the sovereign dignity of God Himself. To allow such horrors to go unchallenged is an abdication of our duty to make disciples of the nations, for it denies Christ's particular love for each and every human soul.

If we fail in this duty, the works of earlier dehumanizers give us a glimpse a what the world will be. The image is one of unparalleled horror. We must not fail, now, or ever.