ט A Late-Term Abortion Story; An Argument for Infanticide. The Christianity Today Weblog linked to a long Boston Globe story by a woman who aborted her baby becaause its spinal cord had not closed properly. The story is openly pro-abortion, and chilling for that very reason. "But in my case, everyone said it was the right thing to do-- even my Catholic father and Republican father-in-law". In the absence of criminal or social sanctions, when it comes to personal convenience versus human life, human life will usually lose. Most people do have principles, but few people have strong principles. Here's the story (with my boldfacing).
...
The next morning, Dave and my mother took me to the hospital in Boston.
I was petrified. I had never had any sort of surgery, and I fought the
anesthesia -- clinging to the final moments of being pregnant -- as I
lay in that stark white room. As I started to drift off, my doctor held
one of my hands, and an older, female nurse held my other, whispering in
my ear, "You're going to be OK, I've been here before, lean on your
husband." It was my last memory. When I woke up, it was all over.
Dave had to return to work the next day. He didn't want to leave me, and
he certainly didn't want to return to the furtive stares of his co-
workers, all of whom knew that we had "lost the baby." I really don't
know how he did it. My mother stayed with me at home for the next week,
trying to glue my shattered pieces back together with grilled cheese
sandwiches and chicken noodle soup. I had no control over my emotions. I
felt like a freak in a world full of capable women having babies, and I
couldn't stop whimpering: Why did my body betray me?
For months, I hid from the world, avoiding social outings and weddings.
I just couldn't bear well-meaning friends saying, "I'm so sorry." So I
quarantined myself, and would try to go about my day -- but then, bam,
heartbreak would come screaming out of the shadows, blindsiding me and
leaving me crumpled on the floor of our house. It wasn't that I was
questioning our decision. I knew we did it out of love, out of all the
feeling in the world. But I still hated it. Hated it.
Instead of cinnamon and spice, our child came with technical terms like
hydrocephalus and spina bifida. The spine, she said, had not closed
properly, and because of the location of the opening, it was as bad as
it got. What they knew -- that the baby would certainly be paralyzed and
incontinent, that the baby's brain was being tugged against the opening
in the base of the skull and the cranium was full of fluid -- was awful.
What they didn't know -- whether the baby would live at all, and if so,
with what sort of mental and developmental defects -- was devastating.
Countless surgeries would be required if the baby did live. None of them
would repair the damage that was already done.
Mrs. Voss clearly hated having an abortion. Indeed, the focus of the article is on her feelings. It's just that she hated having a defective child even more. Note the sentence "What they didn't know -- whether the baby would live at all, and if so,
with what sort of mental and developmental defects -- was devastating." She couldn't even be sure that an abortion would be helpful--- but the mere risk of a surviving, defective, child was enough that she decided to kill it. (And note that the health of the mother was not a problem in this case-- or, rather, the abortion created a slight risk for the mother.)
Suppose, though, that we take the point of view of this woman. Taking her position, we can see that she did the wrong thing. What she ought to have done was to carry the baby to term, thus deferring the mental trauma of the abortion. When the baby was born, one of three things would have happened. First, it might be that the baby would be born dead, or would not even survive to birth. In that case, she has the benefits of an abortion without the guilt. Second, it might be that the baby is born alive, but the defect is not as bad as it might be, and she is happy to have it alive. That is far better than aborting the baby. Third, it might be that the baby is born alive, and with so many defects that she wishes it was dead. In that case, she should just hav the doctor kill it. She will feel bad, but not that much worse than if she had had the abortion. If late-term abortion of defective children is okay, waiting till birth and then using infanticide if necessary is even better.
The only possible flaw I can see in this argument is that the mother might feel much much worse after infanticide of a definitely defective baby than after abortion of a possibly defective baby. Even if such is the case, how bad the mother feels is something government policy can work on. If we think that the mother ought not to feel bad after abortion or infanticide, we can try to educate mothers not to feel guilt, and to some extent we will succeed. The present case shows that we cannot even make someone from Massachusetts lose all guilt over an abortion, but I think we could succeed in reducing the guilt of infanticide down to the guilt of abortion if the doctors and nurses tried just as hard with infanticide as they do now with abortion.
[ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.01.29a.htm . Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]
http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/0.rasmusen.htm.