Making a Murderer
Several weeks ago, I finished watching the documentary series, “Making a Murderer,” on Netflix.
Filmed over a 10-year period, it’s an unprecedented real-life thriller about Steven Avery, who was exonerated of a murder by DNA evidence only to be accused and convicted of another.
Set in rural Wisconsin, the riveting series “takes viewers inside a high-stakes criminal case where reputation is everything and things are never as they appear,” says a promotional message. Unbelievably for a documentary, it is wildly popular and sparked a nationwide debate about the criminal justice system. Though Avery and his nephew were convicted in the second homicide, the series leaves grave doubts about their guilt.
But for me, the show evoked thoughts about an overall issue, the primacy of life. The series was all about life – the lives of the women who were murdered and the lives of Avery and his nephew, who were sentenced to life terms in prison. It was also about the lives of the families of the victims and that of the Avery family.
All Lives Matter
It’s a reminder that “all lives matter,” and that the gift of life is, arguably, paramount, to be cherished and protected. It reminds us that people don’t get their dignity from being in control, or from being born into a certain clan, race or sex, but simply by being a human being.
Does this sound like an unsupported, Pollyanna sort of statement? The founders of our country didn’t think so.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
I like the idea of “the seamless garment of life” to express this idea. Attributed to the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago – who himself provided a great lesson on how to live until the last moment of death – it uses as an analogy the seamless garment of Jesus as described in the Christian Bible. This is how Michael Leach, publisher emeritus and editor-at-large of Orbis Books, describes it.
“The Seamless Garment of Life is not a theory but a principle that all life is sacred, from womb to tomb, in the unborn and the dying, in the murderer on death row and the mother in a coma, in the soldier in Afghanistan and the homeless family in Iraq, in the child abused by a pedophile and the pensioner who can’t afford a doctor, in the oil-poisoned Gulf and the coal mines of Pennsylvania, in the Arab and in the Israeli.
“The Seamless Garment of Life is not a religious belief,” wrote Leach, “but a spiritual understanding that all of us are one.”
Said Cardinal Bernardin: “When human life is considered cheap or easily expendable in one area, eventually nothing is held as sacred and all lives are in jeopardy.”
If, like me, you buy into this idea, you may be against abortion because it robs humans, or potential humans, of life before they get a chance to live it. But you favor the maximum protection and help for mothers who find themselves in the dire straits that lead them to seek abortions. And knowing that poverty is the most important factor in choosing an abortion, you favor programs – government-sponsored or not – that help people get out of poverty.
Importance of Human Life
Abortion arguments, seems to me, miss the point when they get into endless debates about when life begins or when they place abortion in the context of women’s rights. Isn’t the question about the importance of human life, whether born or not? Does being against abortion make you anti-woman? At least half the fetuses aborted are female, after all.
Maybe the most fundamental question is, is abortion the best society can do? Can’t we be more caring about families in distress? More eager to share our resources, either through private or public means, with people living in poverty? Is killing a fetus the most enlightened solution?
Similar arguments can be made about other “life” issues. In adopting the “seamless garment” approach, you can’t just be against assisted suicide, you must favor society doing much more to help people die without loneliness and in peace. And if you’re pro-life, you have to be anti-war, anti-capital punishment and oppose child abuse, human enslavement and the mistreatment and objectification of women.
I support personal responsibility for one’s actions, but society has a role in “making a murderer.” If we’re willing to throw away lives that we believe don’t matter, don’t we contribute to the attitude that life is cheap and the indifference that leads people to disrespect it?
