Beyond the individual and collective problems of the act of abortion comes a terrifying byproduct: a society rooted in a culture of death. When we embrace one type of killing as technically acceptable, we open the door of our collective heart to tolerate all sorts of sin and death in the name of culture.

Now the UK gives us a glimpse of what that looks like as it has  made in vitro fertilization (IVF) a lottery game for which one can “buy a chance” to win a baby. Called the To Hatch Lottery, it operates the same way a lottery ticket to win cash does, only in this case the prize is a chance at a real life baby.  You can read a news report of it here.

Regulated by the gambling commission (read that: a lottery to win baby services is regulated by a commission to oversee gambling; that’s what a big deal it is), the lottery lets people register for a chance to buy a ticket which will let them win fertility services and a chance to have a baby. What is disturbing about this concept is the cheapening of Life. That a baby is something for which you “buy chances” is a troubling concept that borders on trafficking, the ultimate cheapening of humanity, by reducing the childbirth desire to the act of gambling. The odds of winning a baby service are estimated to be 1: 1,000,000, which shows that it’s all about a lottery. It’s a money-making effort and it’s using the promise of a child to fulfill it’s fundraising goals.

However, there is an even more disturbing picture at work here. It was only a few weeks ago I reported on the rise in eugenic abortions in the UK. (Click here to read this startling story.) The inherent problem here is that this is a nation that has devalued Life, making it into an artificially constructed system where one picks and chooses what perfection looks like.

The Abortion Act of 1967 in the UK made it legal to kill all babies with any suspected disability—up until birth. So, theoretically, in the UK, if you want to get pregnant, you can just keep trying, maybe find out maybe your baby has a physical problem you deem unacceptable, kill the baby, keep trying and again, and even buy a lottery ticket to win some fancy schmancy services in hope you might construct a baby you really want.

I couldn’t take enough time to write about the ethical and spiritual issues connected to this UK baby lottery. At face value, it doesn’t even seem that strange to the prevailing culture, which is the problem. It’s what a society looks like that has cheapened the value of life to only the perfection we consider acceptable for “hatching” it.

We have learned to accept killing in utero when the baby isn’t “good enough.” We have learned to accept killing when a person is old or sick. We have learned to devalue anything that doesn’t fit a cultural norm of a culture that’s created by men.

These stories reek of the reasoning that floods the genre of literature known as dystopian. I did my master’s thesis on this literature and daily now I see what I write about 11 years ago fill the front pages of the newspaper–literally. Novels like 1984, Brave New World, The Giver, set the stage for a culture where everyone is given a chance to be equal and have human rights; however, what the average person in these fictional cultures doesn’t see is that the ones who decide who gets to live and die are the culturally elite, which is the heart of eugenics. Generally when the protagonist figures out that really there is no equality, he is killed or marked for destruction.

The UK seems to be on the world stage of seeking a utopia (ideal place) and creating a dystopia (its evil twin). With legal eugenic abortions on the rise, lottery to create a kid for the winning ticket, and loose abortion restrictions, our friends across the pond are ready to help us find their way into a culture of death.