A teen burned, buried her baby? So what?

By Ellen Makkai

Brooke “Skylar” Richardson, an Ohio teen, landed in court last week for killing, burning and burying her newborn daughter, birthed a day or two after the school prom in May. She pleaded not guilty.

No big deal; we’ve been legally killing kids since 1973.

If she hadn’t been so distracted preparing for prom, a quick trip to Planned Parenthood the day before would have done the trick with no negative ramifications. What difference does a day make?

Skylar and her dead baby are undoubtedly one result of the mixed messages emanating from our cultural schizophrenia over pre-marital sex, pregnancy and abortion. We saturate our kids with sexual images, entertainment and personalities – prompting them to go for it.

Play! Just don’t get caught (i.e pregnant).

“Skylar and her family, particularly her mother, were pretty obsessed with external appearance and how things appear to the outside world,” says Warren County prosecutor David Fornshell. The Richardson family’s social veneer was such that any revealed sexual faux pas was not tolerable.

Then perhaps it was our national indecision that dealt the fatal blow to this little one. We haven’t settled the issue. Is killing an unborn baby, even a newborn, infanticide?

Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University and author of “Practical Ethics,” dehumanizes both the newborn with the unborn in a convoluted theory. Because these children have not yet the capability to recognize their own humanity and future, he states that they do not have the right to life. “The fetus does not have the same claim to life as a person, [thus] it appears that the newborn baby does not either.”

Consequently, one teenager could posit, “Abortion-on-demand is legal, a child can be killed moments before birth, then why not moments after?” There are horror stories of born-alive babies being abandoned to die, even snuffed out by practitioners.

Unborn children were stripped of their personhood in the Supreme Court’s 1973 pro-abortion decision, Roe v. Wade. Since then we play a rhetorical sleight of hand to make infanticide palatable. “Abortion” is now “reproductive health” or “pregnancy termination.” “Child” has become “foreign uterine matter.”

Planned Parenthood’s 1952 pamphlet accurately stated, “Abortion kills the life of a baby.” Sixty-four years later, infants dismembered and extracted by Planned Parenthood abortionists are POCs, or “products of conception,” aka “clumps of cells,” without acknowledged human characteristics.

Hypocrisy abounds. To ensure that nothing is left behind for infection, abortionists studiously identify and removed arms, legs, skulls and torsos, not “clumps of cells.”

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America states in its 2015-2016 annual report that it ended the lives of 328,348 children in 2015 alone.

Ironically, Skylar’s full-term baby was a candidate for partial-birth abortion, which many consider legalized murder. The grisly procedure would have accomplish her ultimate goal – to be rid of the uterine parasite and social humiliation. The abortionist would have even trashed the evidence. But once her daughter emerged and gasped her first breath, the teen’s next homicidal actions are deemed capital crime. Did Skylar know it? After all, human designation has become so murky in this values-neutral generation.

The late abortionist, George Tiller cited “mental health reasons” for the frequent full-term abortions he performed. Reasons included mothers’ inability to find babysitting, attend rock concerts or the prom.

In the Richardson case, perhaps the umbilical cord was still connected during the slaughter, suggesting to Skylar that she and her daughter were still one. Did the young mother succumb to the feminist pro-choice mantra, “My body, my choice,” as if the child hadn’t yet fully detached and earned an individual identity?

Who knows? Who cares? The Richardson’s baby girl is dead. Then she was burned up and buried like so much garbage. Unless someone else helped her, Skylar’s “not guilty” plea is a lie.

Since 1973, one-fourth of our population has been extinguished. That’s 59,115,99 children (Guttmacher Institute). And until the slaughter of innocents is stopped, we are all to blame.

“Save those who are being led to their death. Rescue those who are about to be killed. You may say, ‘We don’t know anything about this.’ But God knows what is in your mind, and He will notice. He is watching you, and He will know. He will pay each person back for what he has done.” (Proverbs 24:11-12, International Children’s Bible)

Ellen Makkai

Ellen Makkai is a former syndicated columnist Bible-reading grandmother originally from Cambridge. Massachusetts. Read more of Ellen Makkai's articles here.


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