I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

Jackie, you're on a roll. Keep 'em coming!!

Barak Obama voted against the "Born Alive Infant Protection Act" multiple times because he believed that it might have been a backdoor attempt to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

He voted to make sure that it was legal to leave a baby who survived an abortion attempt in a sink or on a shelf to die rather than attempt to resuscitate it.

What a guy.

This was also linked to the above - Andrew Bolt, an Australian journalist wrote it - sorry if it upsets anyone:

I HAVE written about cases so shocking that whatever you think of abortion - for, against or agonised like me - I thought you’d agreed.

Yes, here a boundary was crossed. This, at least, is too much like murder.

There was the 2000 case of the “abortion” of Jessica, a healthy 32-week-old foetus, after her deeply distressed mother threatened suicide if made to give birth.

The mother thought Jessica could be a dwarf, which meant bad luck. But on “delivery” of the girl, killed in the womb, a nurse at Melbourne’s Royal Women’s recorded: “The baby doesn’t look small.”

I thought this would at least prompt restrictions on the abortion of healthy babies so close to birth.

I was wrong.

Later, I reported on Jessica Jane, aborted in Darwin after her mother decided she’d prefer her career.

Jessica Jane was expelled from the womb - alive. She was placed in a stainless-steel dish by a horrified midwife and left in a room, where she cried until she died, alone, 80 minutes later.

I thought this might force us to consider how carelessly we said “foetus” when discussing late-term abortions, when we’re actually talking about babies who, outside the womb, can cry - and take an hour to die.

Wrong again.

I was just as wrong to assume that publicising other cases - like the rescue of an aborted baby, still alive, from a bin at Sydney’s Westmead hospital - might make us agree such deaths involve a profound wrong. Yes, a mother has a right to her body, but surely these babies had a right to their lives.

But again no debate. Or so I thought.

Now the Journal of Medical Ethics has published a paper by professional “ethicists” that confronts the very hypocrisy that troubled me - that we permit the killing of children in the womb who we’d rush to protect if outside it.

But here is how Alberto Giubilini of Monash University and Dr Francesca Minerva of Melbourne University say that hypocrisy should be overcome.

“What we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is (permissible), including cases where the newborn is not disabled.”

That’s right. Since we already permit the killing of babies inside the womb, why not outside it, too?

As the authors say: “If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the foetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.”

A legal reason for killing your baby could be, say, unexpected losses at the pokies, leaving you short of cash for nappies.

That’s how I interpret this bit: “We do not suggest any threshold (beyond which you can’t kill your healthy baby), as it depends on the neurological development of newborns.

“However, ... if economical, social or psychological circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden on someone, then people should be given the chance of not being forced to do something they cannot afford.”

So, it’s unclear how long you would have to lawfully kill a child who becomes too expensive. Two weeks? Two years?

Indeed, there is no obvious boundary once you’ve rubbed out the absolute line in the sand: thou shalt not kill the baby in the womb.

Yes, this is the slippery slope argument that progressives hate, because it gets in the way when they argue for same sex marriage or euthanasia.

Yet, the defence of the journal’s article by its editor, Julian Savulescu, shows how slippery that slope can be, since he offers the “they’re all doing it anyway” excuse that can licence any mass barbarity.

“The arguments presented, in fact, are largely not new and have been presented repeatedly in the academic literature.”

In fact, what shocks Savulescu is not a proposal to allow the murder of babies, but that people should be angered by it.

“What is disturbing is not the arguments in this paper nor its publication in an ethics journal. It is the hostile, abusive, threatening responses that it has elicited.”

Poor ethicists. How scary if some people feel entitled to threaten you, as if you were just some baby.

After all, even in a world where a baby’s life isn’t sacred, an ethicist’s is.

Isn’t it?

Just to be clear - the Born Alive Infant protection act was passed and signed in 2002.  Two years before Barack Obama was elected to the U. S. Senate.  The bills he voted against were in Illinois.  His stated reason for voting against them was that they didn't include verbiage to protect the right to abortion. 

Also, to be clear.  I personally would never have chosen to have an abortion (fortunately, I'm past ever having to make such a choice in the future .  My position, however, is clear.  I support the right of other women to make their own choice.  IMO a late term abortion should be performed ONLY if it is required to save the life of the mother.  In general, I feel that an abortion should be performed only within the first trimester.  If, however, an abortion attempt results in a live child being born, it is wrong to do anything other than attempt to save that child. 

Suzie, Athena and E, I agree with you about late term abortions. I firmly believe in a woman's right to chose before the fetus is viable. But when s/he can breathe on its own all bets are off. There are LOTS of people in this country desperate to adopt a healthy baby!

It is too bad that some of those opposed to a woman's right to have an abortion try to lump the rest of us in to a group that supports contraceptive abortion, late term abortion, serial abortion and post birth abortion (which I suspect is already addressed by the homicide laws).  It is not a black and white issue.  I do not support any of the above situations.

What Pip said.

It is appalling to hear a case made using an unusually extreme example (if it even happened) followed by slippery slope arguments. None of this encourages me to side with that debater.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was also president of our provincial Planned Parenthood group. Several people thought they were being funny when they made comments about my pregnancy as if I had to be against babies. I reminded them of the name of the organization - Planned Parenthood. My baby was very much planned and wanted. One of the sayings of the organization was "pregnancy by choice not chance". When birth control information and devices are easily accessible, unplanned pregnancies are much fewer.

Well, abortion is a HOT issue, but I'll wade right in anyhow!  I note that there are folks south of the border who have been much too eager to personally define when life begins.  The latest I heard was at the time of conception.  This of course is all because these same folks want to abolish abortion altogether and so they bring forth the most idiotic and medically baseless of reasons.

Whatever happened to the concept of "life begins when the first breath outside the womb is taken"?  Ever heard of a doc smacking the baby's backside to make him breathe and bring him to life?  I watched a video of a baby elephant being born.  Didn't move for several seconds after falling on the ground, so mom used her foot to give some gentle kicks to his backside to get him to breathe.  Yes, for at least 2 minutes after delivery, the baby elephant was outside the womb, and without mom's intervention, the baby elephant would not have come to life.

I worked some years ago in a hospital with a Level 4 NICU.  I encountered several babes delivered at 27-28 weeks, some weighing less than a pound of butter.  I know what fetuses look like in the womb, pretty much the same as they look in an incubator but without the multitude of tubes running in and out of their various orifices.  I don't agree with abortion past the first trimester, unless the mother's life is at risk.  At the same time, I just cannot understand how anyone can posit that a fetus is "alive" while in the womb.  Life as we experience it begins --according to medical science, in which I believe -- when the first breath is taken.  Life ends with the last breath. 

Blue - how terrible. 

My first child was born at 26 weeks and spent 3 months in the ICU.  She's the one I was doing the wedding stuff with in Vermont.

Blue, so sad that you lost a lovely baby, but so glad you were able to have your gorgeous daughter.

Blue so sorry to hear of your long ago loss. My first also had the cord wrapped around his neck at birth. Fortunately it was a long cord, a relatively short delivery and a baby who survived the ordeal.

Blue, I too am sorry.  

Jackie