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Is a baby outside of the womb a person? Jill Stanek and I would like to know! In her article with the same title, Jill recounts the following story:
On July 20, police in Hialeah, Fla., were called to a crime scene where at least two eyewitnesses later identified a person who zipped a moving baby gasping for air into a biohazard bag and dumped the baby in the trash.
Twenty-seven days later, that murderer has not been arrested.
Furthermore, witnesses have alleged additional crimes of obstructing justice and tampering with evidence.
But the wrinkle is these crimes were committed at an abortion mill by a clinic worker, and the victim was a live aborted baby. The wheels of justice move slowly, sometimes never, when it comes to crimes committed by abortionists.
This seems obvious to me– and yet I can understand why the officials did not want to get involved. It is my belief that if government started trying to enforce laws on abortionists, the whole system would crumble– and government would be blamed. No one in particular wants to bear the “blame” of making it so that abortions cannot be performed and women cannot have their choices– and so the abortion clinics are able to run counter to every medical practice.
When I had my wisdom teeth out a few years ago (ok, so it was probably more than 10), there was a whole host of things that I had to be informed of as to what could happen should the doctor make a wrong move with his scalpel. If I had eaten, I could die, if he did this wrong I could lose all feeling in my jaw, the list went on and on.
And yet only now are we beginning to discuss with women what the baby will feel as it’s being poisoned, dismembered, or having its brains sucked out. I’m sorry to be graphic, but this is a grisly way to kill someone, and we are condoning and protecting it with euphemisms.
In this case it is clear cut– the baby is alive, breathing, and someone chose to kill it because it was supposed to die. How is that moral? How is it moral to not have stringent controls in place in a procedure that half the country believes is one which takes a life? For something so morally repugnant to so many people, we seem to want to let people continue on their merry way much like they must have done with slavery before the Civil War.
If we’re not going to stand up for the unborn– or even those that have been born only minutes– who will?
I think there need to be more sites up that show the grisly details. (I dont particularly want to look at them myself) But I think if women knew what they were doing far fewer would want to do it. Oh, Im sure there would be the few sickos who still wouldnt care. they’d harden their hearts to it. But in general i think fewer women would do it.
Mrs. Meg Logan
Meg, you are right. there is a place one can go to, about the partial birth abortion, and it is not a pretty sight. Campi wrote about it here: http://stevenjcamp.blogspot.com/2006/11/rick-warren-barack-obama-and-partial.html.
How do they call it? Human rights? Women lib? Or maybe, maybe we should call it MURDER?
This is a good argument for requiring and/or making available ultra-sounds to women who are considering abortion.
I agree with Rebecca. *nods* Sometimes a mother’s heart will not allow her to kill her child, once she sees that that tiny life really IS a baby. That’s one thing that bothers me about scientists and doctors- the way that they remove the humanity from unborn children.
More than anything though, I don’t believe that this is really an issue of misinformation, not truly. So many people just view children as the “end of their life”, something traumatic that will ruin everything. Until we help cultivate a culture that takes joy in children, there will be many more abortions. So many people don’t want their lives interrupted. Others simply need the church to BE the CHURCH, because they are afraid that they can’t even feed this new life.
Oy. I could probably talk about all of this stuff for ages, I feel so strongly about it. As a mother who has lost two young sons because of premature birth, I just can’t see abortion as anything but murder, with a capital “M”. Sometimes I wish that some of these women can witness that, watching a woman grieving over her tiny, perfect child- yet too young to live outside the womb. I’d love for them to see the perfect turn of a nose, or to see those long and beautiful little fingers that will never hold a mama’s thumb. Maybe in seeing grief over the death of one so young, maybe their hearts would be prickled, and they would see how wrong it is to do such a thing on purpose.
I don’t know… *shrugs* I just find it painful that there are so many people who would love to have more children, but can’t- and yet there are people who can’t be so troubled to even bother to give up their babies to those who would love them whole-heartedly. It just makes no sense to me that killing seems like a solution to anyone…
Me either, Jenna. Btw, I’m so glad to see you over here…I’ve been a lurker-sometimes commenter at the Choosing Home blog and appreciate your ministry and what you’ve gone through. I pray your heart heals soon.
MIn, great contrast above…with the warnings dr’s give about everything but abortions. It just goes to show that they must feel shame in the procedure. Sure they’ve been hardened to it, but how many abortions did they perform before they went numb to what they’re doing? I think it must be fairly often that a baby survives an abortion…it would take a highly unfeeling person to shove it in a bag and leave it to die. What deception to value a woman’s choice over that helpless life in need.
At what age is the legal limit for aboryion in the U.S.? In the UK, the limit was lowered to 22 weeks because of a presumption against abortion after an age at which the baby could survive (i.e. before the earliest date of viability).
Whilst this still allows far too many abortions, I don’t think something like what is described above could occur in the UK. Is there no such safegaurd in the US?
Stephen, there is sadly no legal limit to when a baby can be aborted in the US. Partial Birth Abortions are legal (despite the Partial Birth Abortion Ban act that Pres. Bush put through in 2003) and they are exactly that…up to very last week of pregnancy a mother can choose to abort her living baby when it is “partially birthed”. They deliver the baby feet first, then stab it through the back of the skull. They like to claim that the babies die when the mother is anesthetized for the pain, but that’s not the case. Thus they can get away with throwing live babies in the trash, they do it all the time. There are true stories of nurses taking crying infants that have survived abortion and leaving them in dark rooms until they finally die…hours later. And it’s not only a death of neglect, obviously whatever means that failed to kill them in utero, whether saline or otherwise, has to make the dying process extremely painful.
There is a famous killer dr in Kansas named Tiller who is one of the only ones in America that performs the partial birth abortion. According to KS Law, he isn’t supposed to perform them after 22 weeks (except in the case of health, and that’s a big loophole that abortionists abuse all the time), but according to KS’ former Attorney General, Tiller did it all the time and got away with it. World Net Daily recently wrote about the injustice of KS politics and Tiller.
Abortion is an ever growing monster that will probably expand even to the killing of children once born. Parents of colicky infants that can’t take it anymore will probably have the option of “quietly getting rid of their problem”. Honestly, in today’s culture, children are disposable. Once you let a little sin in…such as allowing abortion in order to save a mother’s life, or whatever you think is a “good reason”, you can expect to see it continue to morph into something more and more acceptable by society.
UK abortion law only allows abortion on health grounds (but as you say, that is widely abused). I think there is a provision that abortions can be carried out here at any time in cases of extreme handicap. There was a case where a doctor was taken to court for carrying out an abortion of a child withe a hare lip under that provision (but even under that provision, practice here dictates that such abortions are not supposed to happen after about 24 weeks).
What you describe above sounds even more barbaric. Do you have a source about the partially birthed abortions?
Whilst the debate on abortion in the US seems to polarize around pro-choice and pro-life, I think that in the UK at least, many people take a middle view.
Clearly there are very many who agree with the Christian/religious viewpoint about life beginning at conception, and thus abortion being murder at any point beyond that. There are also a few who argue for abortion on demand up until birth (usually for reasons of political conformity IMHO!)
But in discussion with people I have found many hold a view somewhere in the middle. They see the arguments for the woman’s right to choose what she does with her body (although perhaps ignoring that she already chose!), and they see that there is no real difference between killing a child just before it is born and killing it just after, and so they rationalise the point in terms of the level of development (particularly brain development).
Thus there is no call here to allow abortion on demand beyond 22 weeks, but similarly no consensus that abortion should be outlawed entirely.
Clearly I disagree, but the debate becomes more rational if people are willing to reasonably consider both sides of the argument (even though that doesn’t always mean we side with the middle ground!)
Stephen you can find quite a bit out about it here
Thanks for the link
Stephen
Mary, you did a good job of describing our situation. The problem in this case was that it was obvious that the baby was alive, but people those in charge didn’t care. Because of the fact that they are callous toward life, even if the baby is crying they view it as dead.
My pastor told a story yesterday of a woman who had an abortion, and had to go back in because she was bleeding to death. The nurse (despite the woman’s protest) put on the chart of what was wrong with her “bleeding due to surgical procedure.” We don’t even have a good record of just how bad the problem is.