It is possible for human life to be reduced to a very, very low level. Survivors of famines and totalitarian prison camps tell of doing things and seeing things done that they would never have imagined civilized people, themselves included, capable of. “If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God), you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin,” T. S. Eliot wrote. Horrible things happen to people — no, that isn’t quite right: Horrible things are done to people. Detroit is not the Jiabiangou Labor Camp, and lunch in sunny Los Angeles is not the Arduous March. These are free people in the most prosperous and peaceful nation this world has ever known, and these butchers might have chosen anything.

This is what they chose.

Human beings are not lumps of labor. They are not capital, consumer goods, taxpayers, commodities — or meat. The philosophy of Planned Parenthood (and Eros is a jealous god) is the philosophy of men-as-meat, and that philosophy is not long compatible with liberty and human dignity. When Erich Fromm wrote his famous book on the dream of religion without deity, he titled it “You Shall Be as Gods.” The truth is that without an understanding of the uniqueness of human beings and the consequent value of every human life, you will not be as gods — you will be as meat.