According to the Environmental Protection Agency, a human life is worth $900,000 less than it used to be. An MSNBC article from July 10 puts it this way:
Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences.
When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule. The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation, such as tighter restrictions on pollution.
What about other ways in which life is devalued, perhaps even by ourselves? And what makes one human life less precious than another?
Being unwanted?
Our local newspaper published a letter from a woman who declares that terminating an unwanted pregnancy is being responsible to the family and to the community. It would seem that in her view it is being wanted that gives a life value.
The consequences of this attitude are both mind-boggling and frightening. If a life is only valuable to the degree that it is wanted, what does this say not only about human life at its beginning, but also about some of the most marginalized people in our society, whether the homeless, the mentally ill, or those who are simply too difficult to put up with? If no one wants them, perhaps because they are seen as burdens to the community or to the family, then do they have no intrinsic value and are therefore disposable?
Being handicapped?
The website “Medical News Today” reports on a provision in England’s abortion laws:
It is a shameful fact, in a country claiming to have reached a high moral plateau on equality, that the disabled baby can be aborted up to birth, whereas the baby without disability has greater protection and the limit is set at 24-weeks gestation.
Being on the wrong side of a war, or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Rightly or wrongly, it is traditional to value the lives of one’s own soldiers higher than those of the enemy. After all, one goal is to kill as many of the enemy as possible without being killed oneself. But what about civilians?
As of October 7, Iraq Body Count (IBC) records between 88,253 – 96,340 documented civilian deaths by violence (whether on the part of the coalition troops or others) resulting from the US-led intervention in Iraq. Other sources report higher figures. Are these lives to be cheapened as simply “collateral damage”?
Being considered unworthy for one reason or another?
- A sinner? (So are we all sinners. Sinners are the ones for whom Jesus died and rose.)
- A criminal? A murderer?
God decries our sins and crimes, because by them we hurt ourselves or others, but they do not diminish our value in God’s eyes.
When we get right down to it, each of us suffers from unworthiness, but only some of us have the grace to be aware of the fact. That this is a common affliction of the human condition does not excuse cruelty or even ungraciousness toward others, but it does make judging a perilous venture.
Each one of us is infinitely cherished, whether or not our parents wanted us, and no matter what others think of us — no matter, as far as that goes, what we think of ourselves. (See “Beloved of God.”) Each one of us is of inestimable worth regardless of our looks, the shape of our bodies, or the state of our physical, mental, emotional, or even moral health. Boundless love enfolds us, and there is nothing we can do to change that fact.
So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
…
God saw everything that he had made,
and indeed, it was very good.(Genesis 1:27, 31)