Cosmo: Kill unborn but don't let 'em 'smoke'

On Jan. 30 of this year, the women's magazine Cosmopolitan published an article entitled, "10 things you should know about 20-week abortion bans."

Naturally, this helpful list of things you should know was a one-sided compilation of arguments against the restrictions, sprinkled with quotes from Donna Crane, the vice president for policy at NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Among other arguments against the restrictions, the magazine claimed that unborn babies "probably" do not feel pain at 20 weeks gestation. The article staunchly maintained that attempts to ban abortion at 20 weeks were simply part of a wider effort to ban abortions entirely.

In fact, the effort to ban abortion at 20 weeks is based on a weight of scientific evidence demonstrating that unborn babies react to pain at 20 weeks or earlier.

How do unborn babies react to pain? The way most people do. They recoil, push back and try to get away.

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An article published by three pediatricians at Arkansas Children's Hospital notes that at as young as 16 weeks gestation, unborn babies responded to a needle puncture "by vigorous body and breathing movements, suggesting that this procedure may be noxious."

Perhaps one can't expect a pro-abortion publication like Cosmopolitan to ever concede that unborn babies, like all humans, feel pain.

But then again, maybe one can.

Just when one would get the impression that the magazine couldn't care less about fetal pain, it surprised us all.

Fast forward to this week, when Cosmopolitan.com published ultrasound footage of an unborn baby grimacing and recoiling at the effects of nicotine produced when the expecting mother smoked a cigarette.

The magazine, which had only used the term "fetus" when dismissing the idea of fetal pain in the context of abortion, had a complete change of tune in the context of smoking.

It referenced the "disturbing ultrasound images," produced on an "unborn baby" when his or her mother smoked a cigarette.

The same magazine that would dismiss as pro-life propaganda scientific evidence that frantic movement by unborn babies is a pain reaction had this to say about babies whose mothers smoked:

"The higher-than-normal mouth movements of the babies who inhaled smoke … is further confirmation that nicotine is terrible for unborn children."

The fact that babies suffer an almost identical reaction when injected with a needle or undergoing a brutal death by abortion means nothing to Cosmopolitan, because the same science that supports its opposition to smoking directly undermines its support for abortion.

The images of a baby recoiling in pain are disturbing. That reality that abortion takes a human life – and that human can feel intense pain in dying – is even more disturbing.

One can't expect Cosmopolitan to ever concede that fact. But the magazine's blatant double standard speaks for itself.