The Walking Dead and The Sanctity of Life

TWD
Photo Credit: AMC

(Spoiler Alert if you are not caught up on this weeks episode)

It might seem like a natural progression, and those that argue that there is no slippery slope are falling flat on their face with this one. The debate of abortion has moved beyond what constitutes life and into the realm of infant viability outside the womb. Even worse, if an infant is viable outside the womb, if the intent was to have the baby aborted, and the baby is viable after a failed procedure, then the life of the baby is still up for debate. The mother and doctor get to decide if the baby should live or die. This has nothing to do with abortion, it’s strategic homicide. We no longer need to have debates on when life begins when we have moved the moral line so far to the left that we are debating if the intent of the abortion should still stand, and the end result of a dead baby should still be upheld, even though the baby is able to live outside of the womb. Infanticide is the nice way of stating the crude reality that is infant homicide.

People that allow innocent to die are always portrayed as the bad guys and evil in our literature, movies and shows. The good people are the ones that risk their lives for the innocent. This isn’t just a Christian viewpoint, it’s our culture’s viewpoint.

In this past week’s episode of The Walking Dead, a mysterious group of people have been haunting the survivors of the Hilltop Community. If you are not a fan of the show, this community, along with two others, have formed a post-apocalyptic society of peace that has been years in the making. It has been the closest thing to civilization since the first episode almost ten years ago, when a virus was unleashed and created the world of zombies our heroes have found themselves in.

After years of heartache, death, enemies and failed experiments of survival, it seems that these three communities, including Hilltop, have managed to sustain life. Of course, the survivors are always fighting off the undead, but they have stopped fighting each other. Now enter the Whisperers, a group of people who have survived by dressing up as zombies and walking among them. At first, it seemed as if the zombies had evolved and gotten smarter and were able to move together with a purpose. It was then revealed that these “evolved” zombies were people wearing masks pretending to be part of the herd.

Back to Hilltop, this group of Whisperers have taken hostage two of the members of Hilltop, and Hilltop has taken the daughter of the leader of the Whisperers who has named herself “Alpha.” The show has made it clear that this group of people are the new enemies of the show, the antagonists that our beloved characters need to fight against.

Keep this in mind, the show has set up for several seasons and years that there is still a certain level of humanity, rules and ethics to live by even when it seems that everything has gone to hell. The bad guys are the ones who subscribe to a survival of the fittest mentality. If you are weak, you deserve to die is the common thread among The Walking Dead’s antagonists.

In this latest episode, there was a female Whisperer, who had a baby with her that was making some noise. Alpha stated that they are animals, even animals carry their babies. This has been how this group; the Whisperers have survived. At one point in the negotiations of trading hostages, the baby starts to cry and draws the attention of a real herd of zombies nearby. Alpha gives the woman a glare and the woman proceeded to place the baby on the ground and step away. The real zombies cannot distinguish themselves from the Whisperers who are dressed as zombies and remain quiet. The protagonists immediately question why Alpha is leaving the baby vulnerable.

“If the mother can’t quiet the child, then the dead will. Natural selection.”
– Alpha S9E11 The Walking Dead

The Hilltop gang immediately sprint into action, recover the crying baby and bring the baby within the safe walls of the Hilltop community. At the end of the episode, an older couple who had been grieving the loss of their child from a previous season was shown holding the new addition to Hilltop. It was a joy they were willing to accept into their lives.

I’ll keep my points clear and simple.

  1. Babies, even unwanted, are worth fighting for.
  2. Babies, even when they present a threat to the community, are worth fighting for.
  3. Babies, even when discarded by others, are worth fighting for.

Leave it to a gruesome show that walks a fine line of ethics, makes you question your own resolve and forces its characters to make impossible choices, to make it abundantly and resoundingly clear that babies are worth fighting for. In the land of the walking dead, babies are the antithesis of this reality. Babies represent not just life, but new life. When everyone around our heroes is dying by fighting for what they believe in, a baby is a sign of hope and represents the future of the human race.

In Truth & Love
Matthew J. Diaz

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Looking forward to your addition to this dialogue.