A Chattanooga, Tenn., jury heard testimony in a first-degree murder and aggravated assault trial that ended earlier this month.
The jury was told the defendant deliberately “punched, kicked and stomped” a woman in the stomach who was 24 weeks pregnant. The unborn baby boy was stillborn the following day. After hearing all the testimony, the defendant was acquitted on all charges.
Had he been convicted, it would have forced the jury to determine whether or not the fetus was technically “alive” at the time of his murder. The acquittal put the issue back on the shelf for the time being.
A week later, on Feb. 7, House Resolution 2436 was reintroduced in Congress. The bill would provide legal protection to unborn children injured during the commission of a federal crime. Congress passed the bill last year 254-172, but the Senate failed to act on it.
The proposed legislation is receiving the strongest opposition from those organizations that claim to represent women, primarily the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood.
The opponents of the fetal protection laws find themselves in an uncomfortable situation. They oppose legislation designed to protect a fetus on the grounds it may lead, in their view, to a “slippery slope” that will eventually slide toward the repeal of abortion laws.
The position they are forced into taking clearly demonstrates how tangled the thought processes become once you step outside of reality into the smoke and mirrors semantic reality of the pro-abortion lobby.
Consider the debate in its most basic terms. They oppose legislation designed to give additional protection to pregnant women on the ideological grounds it may lead to the admission that the unborn baby is a living human being, thus making it more difficult to maintain the right to kill it with an abortion.
The fact that this kind of position can be uttered aloud outside the walls of a mental institution is frightening enough, but the idea that it becomes legitimate dialogue for the public debate is surreal.
The absurdity of the position can be summed up, but hardly understood, even when couched in pseudospeak. Legal experts and political lobbyists are trying to compromise on an issue for which compromise is impossible.
How does one split hairs over an issue like life? If it begins at birth, then the argument about what constitutes “birth” begins to cloud the issue. Does it begin at birth? During gestation? If during gestation, at what point?
If you are prepared to charge a man with murder, then there must first be life lost. How do you write the legislation to protect a woman’s unborn child from deliberate injury without compromising the right to deliberately kill it?
A difficult choice for many lawmakers to make, undoubtedly made more complicated by the reality of what it is abortion rights defenders are defending.
The pro-abortion lobby would like to see legislation written in a more generic form, something similar to legislation written to prevent cruelty to animals. A dog is not the legal victim of an animal cruelty case, rather, it’s evidence. Killing a house pet is OK, as long as it isn’t tortured or starved.
But how do you reduce a human fetus to the level of a housecat and then miraculously afford it the rights of a human being at birth? And is it complete birth, head to toe, or partial birth, when the baby is almost out?
These questions have been before us for 20 years or more, but the answers remain stubbornly in the way of our most creative efforts to evade looking at them.
As I pointed out, the mere fact that there is opposition among women’s groups to recognizing the special circumstances involved in injuring a pregnant woman says volumes about the American conscience.
The Apostle Paul wrote: “But know this, that in the last days, perilous times will come: for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:1-3, my emphasis).
Paul speaks here of the great decline of character in the last days. We can see the decline in these aspects of character in the average person everywhere, especially in “natural affection.” For what should be more natural than a mother’s love for her baby?
Merely debating whether or not society has a duty to protect the unborn while in the womb and helpless has barbarous undertones.
After all, there is not a human being engaged in the debate on either side who wasn’t at one time a fetus, helpless and utterly dependent. Each of us was, at one time, that “thing” we are now so reluctant to refer to as an unborn human being since it then follows that its life is as important as any other human being.
Which is the reason most pro-abortion arguments are couched in double-speak about whether an unborn child is a person, or a class of existence somewhere akin to that of your neighborhood kitty.
After all the debate is over, this horrible fact remains — the most dangerous place in the world for a baby in these “last days” is in its mother’s womb.