The Extinction of the Human Race Has Already Begun

The threat of nuclear annihilation is very real and very terrifying. But it is not, alone, the princi­pal evil — only the summary of the evil already among us. Extinction of the human race is incre­mental, not instantaneous. Let me explain.

Last year during Lent (significantly), a friend wrote me and asked me to come to Chicago on the approaching Saturday, which I did. She and a friend of hers met me at the airport; we had dinner together, then met more people at a bar — all of them strangers to me, though I had heard of Jo­seph Scheidler. Leaving the bar, we formed a small caravan of three cars, drove into the heart of the city and turned into an alley. Chicago had been grey and slushy that day; the alley was littered, potholed, and muddy. In the dim light were sha­dows of rats running for cover under trash dumpsters. Our cars stopped at a loading dock; we got out, jumped up onto the dock, and soon pulled a certain powder-blue trash bag from one of the dumpsters. In the bag was a cardboard box sealed with tape; it was taken from the bag and placed on the back seat of one of the cars. We then drove across town to Joe Scheidler’s home. In his garage we carefully opened the box and removed 42 med­ical specimen bags. In each bag was the torn body of a human fetus.

A disgruntled employee at a downtown abor­tion mill had told Joe that the bodies of aborted babies were being thrown into the dumpsters in this rat-alley. All during Lent, then, the dumpsters were checked three times a week; usually, a box of bodies was found.

Why not immediately scream to the authori­ties? It seems that throwing fetal children away, in Illinois, is not illegal. The authorities will get you for putting dead dogs or cats into dumpsters, but there’s no problem with putting dead children in as long as it’s tidily done. So we kept quiet about it — and were really thankful, in a way, that God had given us the opportunity to practice one of the corporal works of mercy in burying his children.