By Judie Brown
Historically, the term lipstick on a pig refers to making superficial changes to a product to make it more appealing, even though that thing is fundamentally subpar. This is a form of marketing deception, and it is a contradiction to the tenet that honesty is the best policy.
But what about the cultural pig—a theory that is life-threatening, disease carrying, or otherwise harmful to the interested party? While we might hope that truth would be equally available, in this age of evil parading as good, fairness has no place.
We see this in many news stories. For example, a woman named Adriana Smith is expecting a baby, but she has been pronounced brain dead. According to one news source, the family is saying that Emory University Hospital is keeping Adriana’s organs functioning because they are trying to ensure that the baby lives, even though Adriana is clinically dead. But is she?
Dr. Heidi Klessig writes, “People declared ‘brain dead’ are neurologically disabled, but they are certainly not dead, as Smith’s case proves. . . . Adriana Smith is clearly not dead but in a sleep-like coma; no amount of medical care can help a corpse to gestate and deliver a baby.”
Smith’s case could be a teaching moment regarding the value and dignity of the human person, that is if the media were not hell-bent on denying her and her baby life. This is an example of an evil that no amount of philosophizing can make acceptable. At least not in a sane world.
But in the good news department, the government’s tendency to do all it can to assist federal employees who want to end the lives of their preborn children has run into a firewall. In this case “a U.S. district judge has ruled that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) exceeded its authority when it inserted abortion accommodations into the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) — and must now remove them.”
Overruling the cultural accommodation of a mother’s decision to end her baby’s life is a positive step. Yet we must make it clear that a decision to kill another person should never have been legal in the first place.
We see also that the deadly pig that needs lipstick is not exclusive to the US; it is a worldwide crisis.
In Malta, Archbishop Charles Scicluna has issued a stark warning against the legalization of voluntary assisted euthanasia, saying that no matter how it is labeled, it ultimately amounts to ending one’s own life, with assistance.
He said during a homily, “Call it what you will, that’s what it is. . . . We are calling it voluntary assisted euthanasia, but it is about taking your own life, whether it is through a toxic substance or something else, it is still meant to kill you.”
Whether it is abortion, contraception, or imposed death, taking someone’s life or one’s own life is never justifiable. Commentator Brad Littlejohn understands this. In an article addressing the growth in advocacy for assisted suicide, he pointed out that “if Christians are to have a chance of holding the line in looming legislative battles, they will have to fundamentally challenge the culture of convenience, choice, and self-creation that has made the campaign for self-destruction so plausible today.”
Regardless of whether we are addressing the incomparable value of the life of a preborn child, an expectant mother, or a person suffering in some way, we are called to affirm every person as a gift from God.
As Saint John Paul II wrote in Evangelium Vitae:
Like the Psalmist, we too, in our daily prayer as individuals and as a community, praise and bless God our Father, who knitted us together in our mother’s womb, and saw and loved us while we were still without form. . . . We exclaim with overwhelming joy: “I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made; wonderful are your works. You know me through and through.” . . . Indeed, “despite its hardships, its hidden mysteries, its suffering and its inevitable frailty, this mortal life is a most beautiful thing, a marvel ever new and moving, an event worthy of being exalted in joy and glory.”
This is the essence of who we are. This is precisely why we strive to expose that toxic pig in all its ugliness. No matter how the enemies of truth might dress it up, such evil cannot be denied. There is nothing appealing about death and destruction; there never will be, except for those who are blinded by the campaign of self-destruction against which we stand.