Moving Knowledge of Euthanasia from the Head to the Heart.

Have you ever been somewhere when suddenly you're struck by the impression that something of historical and spiritual significance is unfolding before you? The 2005 National Right to Life Convention in Bloomington, Minnesota, left that impression on me.

At first I wasn't sure what happened. But now, after the convention, when all displays have been packed away and everyone has returned to their homes, I've had a chance to reflect. I think I have an inkling what that major historical and spiritual event might have been.

For more than 30 years, the pro-life movement has stood for the value of all human life from conception to natural death, and against abortion and euthanasia. But I was always suspicious that our real heart-commitment revolved around abortion (until recently).

There was a good reason for this: Abortion represents a human holocaust beyond comprehension. More than 46 million lives have been needlessly and systematically extinguished in America before they ever saw the light of day. The abortion industry has churned along with impunity, killing unborn children at a rate of more than 160 an hour each and every day, year after year.

The future threat of euthanasia seemed to some almost secondary--until Terri Schindler-Schiavo's face stared directly at North America's culture of death. Terri put a human face to the barbaric practice of culling humanity of its brain-injured and profoundly disabled by denying them food and water.

For years, there was a vague public awareness and suspicion that withholding nutrition and hydration from vulnerable disabled people was quietly occurring behind closed doors and drawn curtains, in hospitals across North America. Occasionally we would hear about an "incident."

If we found the thought uncomfortable, we could readily accept surreal assurances the victim was "unaware" and didn't "suffer." After all, the prospect of contemplating the alternative was unthinkable. The killing of Terri Schindler-Schiavo brought the practice out into the open with wall-to-wall media coverage.