Inhumane: Maryland bill allows killing babies up to 1 month after birth
Sometimes Christians think there is never a reason to be fearful or angry. But not all fear is bad; some fears are helpful. The child afraid of running out in the street is saved by fear. Not all anger is bad; some anger is good. In his book, The Death of Outrage, William J. Bennet says, “Americans would do well to recall the ancient words of Aristotle. He wrote that those are to be praised who are angry at the proper things and the proper people, who are angry as they ought, when they ought, and as long as they ought.”
Something happening in Maryland recently should make us all fearful and angry. LifeSite News reported on March 7 that legislation was filed in the Maryland General Assembly, which would allow babies to be left to die up to 28 days after birth.
No doubt, this legislation is meant to precede the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court as soon as June of this year. Senate Bill 669 — Pregnant Person’s Freedom Act of 2022 was scheduled to be heard this week, but the Maryland General Assembly’s website says the hearing was canceled.
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Olivia Summers, an attorney for the American Center for Law and Justice, analyzed the measure and said:
“[I]t proposes a revision of the fetal murder/manslaughter statute that would serve to handcuff the investigation of infant deaths unrelated to abortion. In other words – this bill will effectively legalize infanticide. The exact language of the bill states: ‘This section may not be construed to authorize any form of investigation or penalty for a person ... experiencing a ... perinatal death related to a failure to act.’ (Emphasis added). In other words, a baby born alive and well could be abandoned and left to starve or freeze to death, and nothing could be done to punish those who participated in that cruel death.”
Who would dream someone would have the audacity to propose such barbarity into law? Yet this is what great minds have been telling us for decades about where the legalization of abortion was bound to take us.
As far back as 1976, Francis Schaeffer, in his classic book, How Should We Then Live, accused the High Court of making a ruling in the Roe v. Wade case that was both medically and legally arbitrary. He further stated it was at complete variance with the past Christian consensus, which is unquestionably the foundation of American jurisprudence. Only three years after the landmark ruling that made abortion legal, Schaeffer solemnly warned:
“In the pagan Roman Empire, abortion was freely practiced, but Christians took a stand against it. In 314, the Council of Ancyra barred from taking of the Lord’s Supper for 10 years all who procured abortions or made drugs to further abortions. Previously the Synod of Elvira (305-306) had specified ex-communication till the deathbed for these offenses. The arbitrary absolutes of the Supreme Court are accepted against the previous consensus of centuries, as well as against past law. And (taking abortion as an example) if this arbitrary absolute by law is accepted by most modern people, bred with the concept of no absolutes but rather relativity, why wouldn’t arbitrary absolutes in regard to such matters as authoritarian limitations on freedom be equally accepted as long as they were thought to be sociologically helpful? …
“By the ruling of the Supreme Court, the unborn baby is not counted as a person. In our day, quite rightly, there has been a hue and cry against some of our ancestors’ cruel viewing of the black slave as a non-person. This was horrible indeed — an act of hypocrisy as well as cruelty. But now, by an arbitrary absolute brought in on the humanist flow, millions of unborn babies of every color of skin are equally, by law, declared non-persons. Surely, this too must be seen as an act of hypocrisy.
“The door is open. In regard to the fetus, the courts have arbitrarily separated ‘aliveness’ from ‘personhood,’ and if this is so, why not arbitrarily do the same with the aged? So the steps move along, and euthanasia may well become increasingly acceptable. And if so, why not keep alive the bodies of the so-called neo-morts (persons in whom the brain wave is flat) to harvest from them body parts and blood, when the polls show that this has become acceptable to the majority.”
In 1992, pro-life champion, Randy Alcorn, warned that “abortion sets us on a dangerous brink.” He told the story of a 17-year-old Florida girl, who at the time smothered her newborn to death, and a judge sentenced her to two years in prison and psychological counseling and birth control instruction.
“Of course, the sentence for killing someone perceived as ‘a real person’ would have been much more severe,” wrote Alcorn. “As one social analyst points out, ‘A two-year sentence for the willful murder of an infant demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt that the life of a child does not have the same value as the life of an adult.’”
To Alcorn’s point, however, if the Maryland legislation were adopted today, a young woman as he described who took the life of her infant, even after it had been born up to 28 days, would be absolved of any wrongdoing.
Why should this make you fearful and angry? Because it means we are indeed reaching that point where no life is safe if deemed unwanted by the ruling powers.
This author is not advocating for violence or taking the law into one’s own hands. God forbid! Instead, it’s a call to earnestly get into the battle for a culture of life driven by a healthy fear and righteous indignation to stop what is threatening the basis for being a member of the human species.
How inhuman are we willing to become?
Originally published at Christian Action League of North Carolina.
Rev. Mark H. Creech is Executive Director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, Inc. He was a pastor for twenty years before taking this position, having served five different Southern Baptist churches in North Carolina and one Independent Baptist in upstate New York.
