Infanticide: The Old Barbarism is New Again
Earlier this year the word "infanticide" wormed its way into the national consciousness. A video surfaced of Planned Parenthood spokesperson Lisa Snow advocating for infanticide. Her pro-infanticide advocacy took place in a Florida legislature committee meeting. Medical treatment for survivors of attempted abortions, even if not the emergency variety should be withheld if desired by the mother.
Subsequently out-of-mind commentary by MSNBC's resident out-of-mind commentator Melissa Harris-Perry speculated when life begins "depends an awful lot on the feeling of the parents. A powerful feeling, but not science." This is, of course, the depths of stupidity. Turns out the new infanticide is just the old barbarism.
If you extend this line of thinking there is simply no way to tell any parent that killing a child is ever wrong. If life begins with the feeling of the parents, it must end the same way.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Officer: "Ma'am, did you kill your son?" Former mother: "Not really. I no longer felt like he was alive. What's the big deal?"
Unfortunately, it is not only the ridiculous tripe of Harris-Perry at play.
Vivian Norris encourages HuffPo's women readers to abstain from having sex with their men as long as their men vote pro-life. She breathlessly asserts:
"But women, take heed: Don't give in if your man, boyfriend, husband, toyboy is not voting for your best interests, your reproductive health — do not sleep with that man! I don't care how cute or charming he is! I don't care if he is your husband of many years. Resist! Go swimming! Meditate!
Do not make him dinner, do not go fetch him a cold beer from the fridge, do not iron that shirt, hell, do not change that diaper… do not make his life a little nicer this summer if he does not "get it" and learn to respect women! Instead, volunteer some time for senators like Wendy Davis, go with a group of women to Austin and make your voices heard. Get on the computer and the social networks and organize."
And while you are on your way to Austin as a volunteer, do not forget your urine and feces. These, it seems, are the tools of the pro-infanticide lobby.
In this exchange with The Weekly Standard, Planned Parenthood president, Cecile Richards, was unable to explain the difference between a late-term abortion and the infanticide of Pennsylvania abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Truthfully she was probably more unwilling than unable. Until recently only a few far left doctors and ethicists dare defend infanticide. Now, in the morbid and rabid defense of abortion-on-demand, the murder of children after a live birth is the domain of "choice."
Political writer Kirsten Powers argued against an expansion of "reproductive rights" so broad as to include infanticide.
"If the majority of Americans oppose elective late-term abortion, why do we have [Wendy] Davis complaining to CBS's Bob Schieffer that the male politicians who are championing the late-term abortion ban are "bullying women"? Maybe it's she who is bullying the rest of us into supporting a view that is mocked by scientific advancement; namely 3-D sonograms. Maybe we should be thankful for the men and wonder what is wrong with the women who think protecting the right to abort your baby for any reason up to the 26th week is a 'human right.'
Human-rights movements have traditionally existed to help the voiceless and those without agency gain progressively more rights. Yet in the case of abortion, the voiceless have progressively lost rights at the hands of people who claim to be human-rights crusaders. Abortion-rights leaders have turned the world upside down. They want us to believe that a grown woman is voiceless, that she has less agency than the infant in her womb who relies on her for life. A woman has so little agency, we are told, that she is incapable of getting an abortion before the fifth month of her pregnancy. To suggest she should do so is a "war on women." It's an insult to women dressed up as "women's rights."
Given the advances in NICUs abortions needed to save the life of the mother would have dwindled to nearly nothing. Arguing any need for a woman's right to a third-trimester abortion is based on moral, philosophical and legal fictions.
In an essay last year in Slate, William Saletan admits what defenders of children have long argued: there is no logical difference between the killing of an unborn child and a born child. Says Saletan regarding the euphemistically termed "after-birth abortion":
"The case for "after-birth abortion" draws a logical path from common pro-choice assumptions to infanticide. It challenges us, implicitly and explicitly, to explain why, if abortion is permissible, infanticide isn't."
Yes, William, it does.
I would add it also challenges you to own it and admit it. Your ilk has long said pro-lifers only care about unborn children, not born ones. It is clear now that those who support the infanticide called after-birth abortion care about neither.
