to Humanize

​ I recently listened to an interview, on PBS, of someone who was talking about fish and the new discoveries that have been made about their intelligence and how they feel pain.  The person gave descriptions of the conditions in some of the places where fish are raised and the “inhumane” treatment of fish".
 The person doing the interview was so moved that she said that she would not be able to even look at fish in her freezer the same way, as she did before.
 It was clear that the person being interviewed and then the host were attempting to get the listeners to identify with fish. Once people identify with the fish, they will have compassion on them and not eat them or at least show some concern about the way they are treated. I think of Mary Temple Grandin, an American ethologist, inventor, and animal science professor at Colorado State University, who came up with better ways of treating livestock.
 It was really interesting to me how the people on the PBS were attempting to stir up the same kind of beneficence in their listeners as we abolitionist do. While they are attempting to direct this beneficence toward fish, we are trying to direct it toward the preborn. They even used the term “humane” which caused me to consider what the word means.
 I googled it – “having or showing compassion or benevolence.”
"Regulations ensuring the humane treatment of animals"
 Or “formal (of a branch of learning) intended to have a civilizing or refining effect on people.
"The center emphasizes economics as a humane discipline"
 The use of the word “humane” presumes that we would always want to treat humans with beneficence.  So, to treat a fish “humanely” would be to treat a fish the way that we should treat a fellow human. But if we murder the smallest and weakest of humans before they can even be born or keep them frozen in petri dishes for some undetermined time to be either disposed of, like any other waste, or implanted in the hope that one might survive, then haven’t we so dehumanized humans so that that term can hardly be used to stir compassion? When  the world’s governments not only allow but often encourage the murder of 17,000 preborn babies every hour through abortion and IVF procedures, how can humanizing be equated with improving the way we treat a species or be associated with “showing compassion or benevolence”? Promoting regulation of the murder of the preborn or presenting the mother who has her own baby murdered as a victim also contributes to the verbicide of the word humanize.
 The efforts of the Abolitionists are to cause other human beings to identify with their preborn neighbors, in a more intimate or personal way.  The  good Samaritan identified with the victim in Luke 10 when he “felt compassion” for him. Once any human being, be it the abortionist or the pregnant woman, identifies with the baby in the womb in a way that compels feeling compassion, they will not kill the baby in the womb.
 Would it not be a marvelous thing to hear a PBS interview with an Abolitionist?
Pray for this – “…perhaps the Lord will work for us…” 1 Sam. 14