The impetus for this paper came from an invitation to participate in a symposium on endangered species. There are many kinds of endangered species: The more obvious ones are women world-wide who are subject to domestic violence and cultural discrimination, so-called "primitive" people who live in villages and lack the education or the means to defend themselves against more "civilized" predators (native tribes in the Amazons) and black Africans (non-denominational nativists, Christians, and Moslems in the Darfur region of Sudan). There are the victims at both ends of the life cycle, children and the elderly. Millions of children are sold into physical or sexual slavery, and countless millions are aborted because modern technology diagnoses them while they are still in the mother's womb as less than perfect or the wrong gender. Finally there are millions of elderly people with minimal resources and little or no family or social support who live in the community or in institutions and are subject to victimization and neglect. Certainly all of these sectors of human society are endangered.
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