‘First, do no harm’ is a ‘silver’ principle to live by

    Jesuit Father Robert Spitzer has written a remarkable book, “Ten Universal Principles: A Brief Philosophy on the Life Issues,” in which he reverences “The Silver Rule.”
    Everyone knows “The Golden Rule”: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
    The Silver Rule – also known in its Latin form as the Principle of Nonmaleficence – can be summed up easily by just  four words: “First, do no harm.”
    In other words, don’t do a harm to others that you don’t want done to you. Seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes considered The Silver Rule so important he considered it the foundation of ethics. If we do not embrace The Silver Rule, Father Spitzer says, “life will become even more brutish, ugly and short.”
    “This is the minimum of civility on which society can rest,” Father Spitzer says.
     A corollary of the Principle of Nonmaleficence is this: If there is a doubt as to whether or not an action will cause grave and unnecessary harm, we should avoid that action. Because if we act despite that doubt and the action causes grave and unnecessary harm, we have violated the principle and are unjust.
    In its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the U.S. Supreme Court made what Father Spitzer calls “the most remarkable set of deductions.”
    “They established a specious distinction between personhood and human being, then asked a bunch of people who were completely confused by the distinction – when personhood begins – and came to an astounding conclusion: ‘We don’t know – and then we sanction a grave and unnecessary violation of the principle of nonmaleficence,’” Father Spitzer said. “Are you kidding me?”
    It’s the same logic the court used in its Dred Scott decision in which slaves were judged to be “subhuman.” The court said it was unsure whether blacks were full human beings – but then went ahead anyway and declared them less than human.
    The Roe court even made this astounding declaration: If the fetus actually were proved to be a person, “then the case (for abortion) would automatically fall apart.” The court subtly shifted the burden of proof to Texas to show that a fetus is a person.
    “That’s not right,” Father Spitzer said. “The burden of proof should be on the Supreme Court to prove that it’s not a person. If you’re going to sanction the killing of a human being, at least you should have the burden of proof.”
    Into the realm of The Silver Rule marches Marjorie Dannenfelser, the Catholic president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which helps elect pro-life women to Congress and to state legislatures. Dannenfelser was in New Orleans last week to attend a four-day gathering of the Council for National Policy, a group of social conservative activists in the U.S.
    Ten states, including Louisiana, have passed a “fetal pain” law protecting unborn children from abortion after 20 weeks of gestation. The U.S. House passed HR 1797 – the District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act – by a 228-196 margin. All Louisiana Congressional representatives except for Rep. Cedric Richmond voted for the bill.
    The U.S. Senate has not yet taken up a similar bill, but Dannenfelser says she expects one to be introduced “very soon.” If that happens, it would cast a spotlight on the life-related voting record of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who is up for re-election in 2014.
    Dannenfelser says she is optimistic about passing the fetal-pain protection bill on the federal level because it tracks what was done with partial-birth abortion, where individual states continued passing bills to outlaw the procedure despite two vetoes on the federal level by President Clinton. The bill eventually was passed a third time and signed by President Bush.
    The House vote was “historic” for two reasons, Dannensfelser said. For one, never before had a branch of Congress voted to protect an unborn child at a stage before birth.
    “The partial-birth abortion ban, of course, banned a procedure, but we’ll never know if it saved a life,” Dannenfelser said. “But this will save at least 15,000 lives a year.”
    The other historic aspect is that the vote was completely driven by Congresswomen. “The other side was just completely flat-footed,” Dannenfelser said. “They just didn’t have a word to counteract, because they usually use only three words: ‘I am woman.’ It was an awesome debate.”
    The world of science – with its 4D imaging systems – is beginning to add its high-tech weight to timeless ethical principles in support of the natural law and common sense. The “science of pain” is well-established, Dannenfelser says, and hard to dispute.
    “In fact, there’s a lot of evidence that children at that age have intensified pain because the neurons are so close to the skin,” she said. “The skin is so thin that the pain is even worse. When you look at a sonogram and the probe goes in and touches the baby, the baby recoils. That is a metaphor for what any of us looking at that sonogram would do – we recoil.”
    The barbarity exposed during the trial of late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell is something that happens when people of conscience pretend The Silver Rule does not exist or has no meaning.
    My God, anything can happen.
    “We’re going to look back at this as ‘The Gosnell Moment,’” Dannenfelser said. “Enough people saw the horror, and that changes people’s perspective and pricks their conscience in the same way that hosing down blacks in Selma, Ala., did. You see that and you say, ‘Oh, my gosh, I can’t sit there any more. I can’t stay on the fence. I have to act.’”
    More information on the Susan B. Anthony List is available at sba-list.org. Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].