Selective Breeding
Exodus 1:15-22 NIV
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, "When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live." The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, "Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?" The midwives answered Pharaoh, "Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive." So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: "Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live."
The descendants of Jacob were a hearty lot, and they were thriving in the land of Egypt. Jacob and all of his sons had died, but their offspring were growing in number daily. In fact, they became so numerous that they began to seem a threat to the Egyptians. The new Pharaoh didn't know about Joseph. he wasn't aware of the power that Joseph had held in the land. All he could see was this mass of Israelites, growing stronger and more numerous every day. His first tactic to suppress the threat was to make slaves of the Hebrew people. He placed slave masters over them and worked them long and hard, hoping that sheer exhaustion would stem the tide of new births to the Israelites. When this didn't work, he resorted to an attempt at selective breeding. Calling in the head midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, Pharaoh told these women to kill every male child that was born. If Pharaoh could stop the male children from living, he could stop the growth of the Hebrew race.
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Pharaoh wasn't the last leader to make an attempt at selective breeding. The most blatant in recent times was Adolf Hitler, who made a giant effort to create a master race. a world populated with blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryans. the people Hitler believed to be the most superior of all people.
This attitude didn't stop with Hitler. We are busy practicing selective breeding in this country, every day. With the advent of ultrasound, we can now take a close look at every baby while it's still in the womb. As genetic research continues, we are experimenting more and more with ways to breed "perfect" children. children with higher IQ's. children with programmed personalities. children who fit someone's pre-conceived idea of what the perfect child should be. And every day, "defective" children are aborted, using the "quality of life" excuse as justification for murder.
Just as Pharaoh was wrong in wanting all the male children killed, so we are wrong in attempting to sort out the "less desirable" children. Every child conceived in the womb of any woman is a desirable child, because that child was created by God. Think about it.
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