OPINION: Who among us lives an unworthy life?

There is a statement by a Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University research fellow Richard Hanania, acting as an eugenics provocateur regarding Texas Bill 8 — the fetal heartbeat law — which outlaws abortions at six weeks gestation.

He stated there would be very few Down syndrome children if the bill had not passed, as in the Netherlands, where all Down syndrome children are aborted. But it takes 10 weeks of gestation to test for Down syndrome.

A slippery slope to a repeat of the eugenics of the 1930s and 1940s in Germany, applying to the disabled and minorities, was at least temporarily averted.

A German-made movie, “The Last Days of Sophie Scholl,” recounts Scholl’s last week of life.

She is interrogated by a Nazi ideologue exercising control of information (now called fact-checking or thought control) about her and her group, the White Rose. He states she was not raised properly because she resisted the Nazi regime.

She skillfully directs the conversation to mentally handicapped children being told they are going to heaven while being shipped to be poisoned and gassed.

She asked: “Do you think I wasn’t raised properly because I feel pity for them”?

Only momentarily confused, he says, with a dismissive hand wave: “They are unworthy lives,” and asks why she feels pity for them.

“Because I have a conscience.”

Sophie, 21, and her brother, Hans, 24, were beheaded.

Would she have lived a peaceful life knowing she had gravely violated her conscience by cooperating?

She took her stand for freedom, and didn’t have the emptiness of having nothing worth giving her life for.

Beliefs, such as Sophie’s, may require sacrifice.

The 1966 Academy Award winning “A Man for All Seasons” is the last one showing the ultimate sacrifice for conscience and answering to God by Sir Thomas More.

Unlike Scholl and Thomas, lack-of-conscience events have occurred in America.

In an 8-1 ruling in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Virginia law allowing the forced sterilization of “unfit” people. This was to promote “the health of the patient and the welfare of society.” It sounds like the current required sacrifice of the individual for the “common good.”

That, along with the Dred Scott decision of 1857 and Roe v. Wade of 1973, are the most shameful in the Supreme Court’s history.

In all three, it was ruled that a living person created in God’s image has no intrinsic rights. There will be a Supreme Court case soon about the integrity of a person’s body concerning forced medications.

As further evidence of a loss of conscience: Why did the media ignore the abuse by Larry Nassar of our Olympic women gymnasts?

Why is the media ignoring the toxic effects of tech giant Instagram, which is causing suicides of preteen and teenage girls?

Why is there no “follow the money” in the $100 billion bonanza to the Big Pharma vaccine industry and the conflict of interest of regulatory agencies?

What about the insanity of forcing women to register for the draft, who along with men become cannon fodder for unjust and therefore unnecessary wars?

Why isn’t the media reporting and condemning the treasonous activity of Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in ordering the jailing and isolation of Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Jr., colluding with Chinese generals in 2020; and usurping authority by telling the other chiefs of staff they were to obey orders only if coming through him?

Never in our history have military officers attempted a coup without being immediately fired from their position.

And then in a further loss of conscience, the commander-in-chief, states he has great confidence in Milley even when the general wants to share intelligence with the Taliban.

When a U.S. drone kills seven children and three adults in Afghanistan and our officials lie about it for days; when our State Department tells countries near Afghanistan not to help Afghan refugees; when our president gives the Taliban a list of Americans left behind to be likely killed; when 13 American soldiers are killed and private help is blocked, why aren’t impeachment proceedings initiated?

After all, a legitimate phone call is now the established threshold for impeachment.

Despite its insufficient coverage of these events, the media suffers no crisis of conscience because it has no conscience.

And along with the media, our generals have lost credibility.

In an April commentary about courage and conscience, I wrote: “In his description of the life cycle of nations, (Alexander) Tyler observed people start in bondage and at some point develop spiritual faith and conscience. They might develop courage through conscience, and with enough struggle, sometimes including dying, can obtain freedom. Alexander the Great knew how fear grips people, saying: ‘Through every generation of the human race there has been a constant war, a war with fear. Those who have the courage to conquer it are made free, and those who are conquered by it are made to suffer until they have the courage to defeat it, or death takes them.’ President Ronald Reagan stated ‘freedom is not inherited, but must be fought for each generation, to be passed to the next.’ ”

We have a government that does not respect or fear us. What chance, by our actions alone, is there of returning to a constitutional republic as dedicated to God by our founders?

Essentially zero, unless our human actions are first those in ll Chronicles 7:14: “If my people called by my name, shall humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.”

With this and increasing our local involvement first, maybe our descendants will know the freedoms we didn’t fritter away.

“If not now, then when; if not us, then who?” — The Talmud

Eggleston, M.D., is a retired ophthalmolgist. His email address is rjegglestonmd@gmail.com.