In his book “People of the Lie,” Dr. Scott Peck investigated the problem of evil as a possible psychosis. Those he identified as evil are people who refuse to recognize their own imperfections and sins, instead projecting their failures onto others as scapegoats. Often, these scapegoats are children, who suffer the abuse of parents or others who have authority over them. Attempting to escape the damning judgment of conscience, the evil steadfastly refuse to consider that any of their actions are immoral. Any suffering their victims endure is brought on by the victims themselves. Their own actions are motivated by love and a desire to help. This is the lie that permeates the personality of the “people of the lie.”
Kermit Gosnell was a respected member of the Philadelphia community. He was a doctor dedicated, in theory, to helping others heal. Yet, in the coldest, most monstrous and methodical way, he murdered hundreds of newborns, whose only crime was surviving his botched abortions. Then, as a bizarre hobby, kept their feet and other remains in jars, morbid collectibles stored on shelves in what has rightly been called a “house of horrors.” He also killed at least one mother by his malpractice. Somehow, his employees came to work, day after day, year after year, into this bloodbath and among this macabre display of tokens without the least sign of moral outrage or physical nausea.
Certainly Gosnell and his employees would insist that they were helping others. Abortion and infanticide are justified by many as means toward the end of relieving women of unwanted burdens, and securing for them control over their lives. But, the “unwanted burden” in this case, is a child. To make this work requires mental and ethical gymnastics so contorted it surely constitutes a form or moral insanity. Perhaps even a cultural psychosis, a “culture of the lie.” Consider that in Philadelphia is playing out the moral schizophrenia of trying a man for murdering children outside the womb who were legally targeted for death inside the womb only moments earlier. Consider that one of the popular justifications for abortion is that the child in the womb is an “aggressor” against the mother. If we try hard enough, we can convince ourselves of anything. But, do we honestly think we can play this ethical roulette without eventually blowing our moral brains out?
In his classic novel, “The Brothers Karamazov,” Fyodor Dostoyevsky proposes the harsh bargain of achieving peace and harmony at the price of the death of innocence. “Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature — that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance — and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect under those conditions?”
Our culture has taken up Dostoyevsky’s challenge. We are willing to sacrifice the innocent in exchange for the peace and harmony we think comes with choice, rights, and autonomy.
But it’s a false choice, a liar’s game. Peace is never achieved by murder. What we gain, if anything, is temporary and material. What we lose is our moral compass, our cultural integrity, and our eternal souls. There’s been much discussion in recent years over what sort of financial future we’re leaving for coming generations. It’s important to consider, as well, what sort of culture we’re bequeathing our children.
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Comments » 16
fatherc6231860 writes:
Robert
I believe you have too casually juxtaposed "infanticide" (under the law, the killing of a live-born infant), with "abortion" (under the law, the termination of a pregnancy and removal of the fetus). I understand that, under the definition of "personhood" held by those in the anti-choice community, this may seem to be a true equivalency, but the subject of your column was not, "when does life begin" (indeed, if it were, it would be no different than millions of other letters to the editor, guest columns, etc.). No, your column attempts to use YOUR definition of "life" to accuse the pro-choice community of condoning, or even endorsing, Gosnell's actions.
You, sir, are not only incorrect, but your perpetuation of the hyperbolic rhetoric which dominates the anti-choice side of this debate brings us no closer to respecting life until the point of natural death.
Gosnell is a cold-blooded murderer. What he did to those live-born children has not been defended by the pro-choice community in any way, shape, or form. In fact, the law as it presently exists, with a pregnant woman's rights to control her own body still largely intact, has imposed the harshest morally-defensible punishment upon him. While no life should be ended by capital punishment, society has a right to take whatever lesser means are necessary to protect itself from him.
Who bears the blame for driving desperate women into his hands is a legitimate subject for discussion, however, to imply that the pro-choice community approves of infanticide is an outrageous and indefensible lie.
Sand_Pebble (Inactive) writes:
“I believe you have too casually juxtaposed "infanticide" (under the law, the killing of a live-born infant), with "abortion" (under the law, the termination of a pregnancy and removal of the fetus).”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I usually stay clear of this debate because it serves no purpose to argue over it. The law says one thing and that is the way it is. Legally fetuses are considered no more human then African-Americans were considered equal as whites in the South during the Pre-Civil War Era. That’s the law of the land. But is it your argument the only difference between a human and “mass of cells” is what side of a membrane the two are on?
If two women were at the same week of pregnancy, both were getting an abortion at the same time, one abortion was botched and the fetus was delivered and the other abortion went as plan, then it was morally okay to kill one batch of cells and not the other? You are a smart guy fatherc6231860and it is hard for me to believe you think a membrane of a woman’s flesh has some type magical powers to bestow personhood on a batch of cells?
I am not attacking you or your beliefs, I am just curious, please take no offense. Whenever I think of slavery I am baffled by the thought process of the slave-owner, how one person can justify another as a non-human, no more then an animal or a batch of cells. Please give me your opinion on the scenario above and the part of your comment that I refrenced and help me in my study of my fellow humans and our nature.
fatherc6231860 writes:
I take no offense Sand_. You are among the most thoughtful posters on these boards.
First, there has never been a period of time that the law considered slaves in the same manner as it considered blastocysts, embryos, or fetuses. This makes it impossible to make a comparison between abortion and slavery, regardless of one's view on when "life" begins.
That, however, does not mean that your last question about the "magic membrane" is not a good one.
The law, by necessity, has always drawn lines, and almost always arbitrarily.
At the time of the Founding, the line between personhood and non-personhood, was drawn at the moment of live birth. For this reason, when the Founding Fathers guaranteed the right for persons to be secure in their bodies, just as they were in their homes, in the Fourth Amendment, they guaranteed that there were places the government just couldn't go. So, it is not due to a "magic membrane" that a viable fetus can become a person within the time it takes to be born, but due to the crossing of the line drawn by our Founding Fathers.
As a brief aside, we know from the history of the Fourth Amendment, and we should know from the history of the Second Amendment, our rights are not absolute, but are balanced against valid governmental interest. However, at no point does the government's interest become superior to those rights. It is for this reason that the government may impose increasingly strict regulations on the pregnant woman's right to control her own body as the fetus approaches personhood, but may never take that right from her (hence, the fact that a woman has a right to terminate her pregnancy at any stage IF it would so damage her person as to constitute a taking of her fundamental right to be secure in her body).
Thank you for your question. As I think it points out, what is right and wrong under the law is arbitrary. That is why we have ways to change the law. I for one would be in favor of a constitutional amendment granting every mother and every child the right to be free from poverty, from want, from moral condemnation by the self righteous, and from lack of opportunity due to their status as a parent, and providing that it should stand superior to all other constitutional rights. Women should not be punished for choosing life.
NurseBob writes:
fatherc,
"to imply that the pro-choice community approves of infanticide is an outrageous and indefensible lie."
Please google "Planned Parenthood's defense of infanticide" and you'll find a number of articles detailing PP's opposition to laws that require medical care be provided to children who survive abortions, including from the Washington Post. Alisa LaPolt Snow, a PP official, testified before the Florida legislature, arguing against a Florida bill requiring just that. When asked what should be done for a child that survives an abortion, Ms. Snow said that that was up to the woman and her doctor. PP tried to do damage control on Ms. Snow's statement, but then why were they opposing the bill in the first place?
PP, and many others in the "pro-choice community" opposed laws banning partial birth abortion, and condemned the Supreme Court decision banning the procedure. Partial birth abortion is a procedure by which every part of the child is removed from the mother's womb except the head. The child's brain is sucked out while still in the mother's womb, and the skull crushed. That's not infanticide?
Because of "pro-choice" legislatures in Virginia, the law says that a child is not a legal person until the umbilical cord is cut. So, when a Virginia woman killed her entirely ex-utero child, the police explained that she could not be charged because the child's umbilical cord was still intact. That's not infanticide?
In the wake of Gosnell, we're learning of more doctors who regularly killed infants who survived abortions, including Dr. Douglas Karpen in Houston, TX. To say that the "pro-choice community" doesn't approve of infanticide belies that fact that doctors and their clinic staff who perform abortions (one can safely presume, I think, that they are part of the "pro-choice community") are regularly practicing infanticide, either by directly killing children, or leaving them to die without medical attention.
Outside the US, in Canada, a judge refused to give jail time to a woman who killed her newborn, arguing that infanticide was essentially undifferentiated from abortion and, since abortion is legal in Canada, there was no justification for incarceration. She got three years probation.
It is because of pressure from the "pro-choice community" that the abortion industry has been largely unregulated in most states, allowing Gosnell, Karpen, and others to get away with their murderous practices. Happily, that seems to be changing somewhat, and abortion clinics in Michigan and NC have been shut down since. But, the women who went to Gosnell didn't go to him because they were "desperate" and, so, willing to go to any clinic, even one so horrible as Gosnell's. Gosnell's clinic and practices, we're learning, are not out of the mainstream for abortion clinics in the US, no matter what PP wants to claim. The evidence is coming out, and will continue to come out, that Gosnell was simply one of many.
fatherc6231860 writes:
nursebob
First, thank you for your search terms. You might not have known this, but they just happened to be the title of an editorial written by Marc Thiessen, the anti-choice right winger who defends torture as moral and just.
But I'll answer your question, even though I think you already know why Planned Parenthood opposed the Florida bill.
First, the original version of the legislation provided, in the MYTHICAL medical situation covered in the bill (No Florida provider performs post-viability abortions), where an infant is “born alive” after an incredibly late-term induced abortion, the woman would have also been stripped of all parental rights. The Florida Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates opposed HB 1129 because of this particular provision, which they believe is simply intended to intimidate and shame women. Planned Parenthood officials pointed out that the implicit assumption is that women who choose abortion can’t possibly be fit to care for a child — and that’s not something that should be codified into state law.
Second, the dramatic quote to which your refer was taken completely out of context. Alisa LaPolt Snow, testified about the organization’s opposition to that aspect of HB 1129. During the hearing, she was questioned by a panel of anti-abortion state lawmakers who demanded that she respond to questions about this highly unlikely hypothetical situation. According to sources from the organization, the Republican lawmaker who sponsored HB 1129 repeatedly insinuated that women who choose abortions cannot be trusted, defending the provision revoking parental rights because “there is at least suspicion that that biological mother may not have the best interest of that born infant in mind.” When posed with a hypothetical scenario in which “a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion,” Snow attempted to make the point that legislators don’t need to get in the middle of medical situations. “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician,” Snow said.
So, in fact, she was not advocating infanticide, but rebuking a, not surprisingly misogynistic, Florida RWNJ legislator.
fatherc6231860 writes:
Because our readers would have to sift through 4 pages of results to get through the manufactured outrage over this event, I will include a link to the fuller explanation of what happened in Florida appearing at ThinkProgress.org., for whom I thank for the information in my reply.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/...
As for Dr. Karpen, I did see that three former employees collected $25,000 each from Operation Rescue to make a video accusing Dr. Karpen of killing live born infants. I also saw, however, that law enforcement authorities were investigating these accusations. IF they are credible, I am sure that he will be prosecuted just like Dr. Gosnell, in which case, should he be convicted, he will receive the same universal condemnation and severe criminal sanctions imposed on Dr. Gosnell.
Two, btw, is not "many."
As I said before, I appreciate your viewpoint, but I repeat that you gain no support through the reckless use of hyperbole.
Sand_Pebble (Inactive) writes:
Thanks for your honest reply, so it is just a legal issue as of where the mass of cells is located according to yours (and the Supreme Court of the United States) opinion. I find that very scary because I don’t base my beliefs of what is right and wrong according to what a bunch of slave-owners 250 years ago thought and wrote down. If the mass of cells is on the table, then it’s human? If it is squirming inside, punching and kicking to live, it is still just a mass of cells and according to Bob, if the umbilical cord is still attached in Virginia, it is still a mass of cells regardless if it is breathing and crying or not?
I was just curious of the viewpoint of those on the pro-choice side. I am no hero, not trying to change the world. I am not a pro-choice or pro-life advocate. Let people do as they please as long as it is legal. If these masses of cells are humans, then they get an early ticket to heaven. If they are masses of cells without souls and the ability to think and feel, who cares, we will never know?
BTW, our third mass of cells is going to be here in October, its going to be a boy mass of cells. I love watching that little guy jump around on the screen. When we were doing the anatomy exam, he was in a position where the technician couldn’t get a good picture of the heart. I told the technician to wait a second, I put my mouth close my wife’s stomach and made a semi-loud whistling noise. It looked as if someone popped a paper bag inside the womb with him because he sure jumped. The technician was surprised because she wasn’t sure if fetuses could hear that early. For my wife and I, it never occurred to us that he wasn’t a human.
fatherc6231860 writes:
That may be one of the most beautiful posts I have ever read. A heartfelt opinion without a shred of arrogance.
NurseBob writes:
fatherc,
"Mark Theissen, ... the anti-abortion right winger who defends torture as moral and just."
So, you're doing guilt by association now? Planned Parenthood can't possibly support infanticide because Mark Thiessen thinks so! I'm glad you're opposed to torture. I am, too. But, you realize that you're just as inconsistent as Theissen, only in the opposite direction.
How surprising that the Florida legislature thinks that a mother who tried to kill her child might not be the best to care for that same child should she survive the mother's attempt to kill her.
I noticed that you chose not to address the "pro-choice community's" support for partial-birth abortion, or for the laws of Virginia that identify a fully ex-utero child as a non-person so long as the placenta is intact. I ask again, are these not infanticide?
I don't buy that Snow's statement was out of context. Sounds like typical spin to me. The context was clear - if a child survives an abortion, PP's position is that whether or not that child receives medical attention should be up to the mother and the doctor. In other words, the fact that the child is a living human being in no way ought to guarantee her medical attention. You don't see that as a problem?
Also, it's not just in Florida. It's all over the country. Bills considered before legislatures that require that children who survive abortions receive medical attention are routinely opposed by PP and other advocates in the "pro-choice community." Even Edward Kennedy and Hilary Clinton said they supported the child receiving medical attention. Planned Parenthood: Nope!
Your original claim was that the "pro-choice community" doesn't support infanticide. I think the evidence to the contrary is plentiful and decisive. Whether or not you want to accept that is the question. Look, I'm glad you're opposed to infanticide. But, your opposition to infanticide is not shared by many in your "pro-choice community." Instead of denying the evidence, why not accept the facts and use your energies to change the support infanticide receives among "pro-choice" advocates? While you're doing that, I'll write Mr. Theissen and point out how is support of torture is inconsistent with his claimed pro-life ethics.
NurseBob writes:
Sand_Pebble,
Well, you've caused fatherc and I to agree on something! Thanks for sharing your beautiful ultrasound story. Many congratulations on the upcoming birth of your baby.
fatherc6231860 writes:
We agree on many things nursebob.
We differ, however, in that you and yours see criminalization and/or civil compulsion as the way to reduce the tragic number of abortions. I, on the other hand, want to reward and protect the mother when she chooses to continue her pregnancy.
As for your second point, I believe the spin is coming from the anti-choice side.
As my link pointed out, infanticide is illegal in all fifty states, including Virginia.
As for situation in Virginia, your spin is similar in many ways to your spin on Florida law.
As I pointed out earlier, the Florida law was ostensibly was written to prevent a procedure WHICH WAS NOT OCCURRING IN FLORIDA. Actually it was designed to make late term abortions so legally risky as to cause doctors to refuse to perform them (thereby effectively "banning" what the State of Florida could not constitutionally ban directly).
In Virginia, anti-choice advocates passed what they purported to be a bill banning certain late-term abortions (what they termed "partial birth infanticide").
In subsection (c) of the law (Virginia Statute § 18.2-71.1), however, it changed the common law definition of "born alive" to include any fetus, or any substantial portion of a fetus, that had been removed from the womb AT ANY POINT IN THE PREGNANCY that showed "any other evidence of life."
Here is the "Florida trick." Under many understandings of the common law, a fetus was not considered outside the womb until the umbilical cord was severed. The bill did indeed change that definition to remove the relevance of whether the fetus was attached to the umbilical cord. However, as in Florida, that change was meaningless because NO ABORTION PROVIDER was removing living babies from the womb and killing them on the table and getting away with it just because the umbilical cord was attached.
IF the umbilical cord provision was the only thing contained in the bill it would not have been opposed by Planned Parenthood, or anyone else.
Planned Parenthood opposed the bill because it applied to abortions performed at ANY stage of the pregnancy and used the broad term "any evidence of life" as the critical factor in place of gestational stage as the determining factor as to when the duty to preserve "life" began.
Using the anti-choice claim of a fetal heartbeat at 6 weeks, the bill would make a criminal of any doctor who did not "preserve the life" of every six week old embryo that continued to show a "fetal heartbeat."
Again, a little honesty would go a long way.
fatherc6231860 writes:
Keeping with the theme of honesty, I should also state that PP also opposed the law because its "life of the mother" exception was so vague that it would also effectively ban the safest way to perform already infinitely rare late-term abortions permitted when the mother's life is in danger and forces the physician to "deliver" any "live born infant" (which, as we know, includes a 6 week embryo under the anti-choice definition) if the mother's life can be saved.
I understand that the anti-choice advocates have lost the argument over abortion, but subterfuge and deceit is not the way to change that.
As much as I understand the moral imperative that is at work here, and even agree with it, it is an imperative ONLY when there is no other way to achieve its goals.
If you want to end abortion, try instead to promote social justice for women, mothers, and children.
NurseBob writes:
fatherc
You say that infanticide is illegal in all fifty states, and that the pro-abortion side doesn't support infanticide. I provide you with ample evidence to the contrary, and you still refuse to acknowledge the obvious. You simply change the definition of infanticide to ... well, what exactly? ..., then insist that "Hey, we don't support that!"
It's moral insanity to say that the dignity and well being of one group of people is contingent on their possessing the right to kill another group of people.
You deny that killing a child who is ex utero instead of her head (partial-birth abortion) is infanticide. You deny that killing a child who is ex utero except still attached by her umbilical cord is infanticide. Yet, you demand honesty on the part of pro-lifers. Another example of what I call the "moral insanity" of the pro-abortion advocates.
Here's the link for the Virginia case: \
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/18...
I don't think there's any reason to go on here. You're so thoroughly steeped in the pro-abortion mentality that you're even willing to defend infanticide, while insisting that you oppose it, then demand honesty on my part. Again, moral insanity. That's a wall I have no delusions of being able to break through. If you can't see what PP and other pro-abortion advocates are doing, I'm not going to be able to show you because you refuse to see what's in front of your eyes.
fatherc6231860 writes:
Now you have graduated from impassioned Catholic driven by what he believes to be a moral imperative (arguable a defensible, if not a good, thing) to full blown liar.
I never denied that killing an ex-utero child that is still attached by the umbilical cord is infanticide. What I stated is that, under many, BUT NOT ALL, accounts of the common law (do you even know what that is?) a fetus was not considered a person until the umbilical cord was cut. THAT is a historical fact.
What you have produced is ZERO, ZIP, NADA evidence that Planned Parenthood, or any other mainstream pro-choice group, supports infanticide. You have produced ONLY evidence that they have opposed bills whose REAL purpose and EFFECT is to limit legal abortions either directly or indirectly BUT have included throw-away language in those bills that affect NOTHING that is really happening so that, when Planned Parenthood and others try to preserve a woman's right to control her own body AS GUARANTEED BY THE FOURTH AMENDMENT and oppose those bills, LIARS like you can come out and accuse them of supporting infanticide.
As for your video, it had NOTHING to do with abortion, but of a mother escaping justice for killing her child because Virginia was one of those states that still followed the afore-described version of the common law.
IF you and yours cared AT ALL about correcting the injustice in that case, your friends in the Virginia legislature would have passed a FREE-STANDING bill putting Virginia in line with those states following the alternate version of the common law that holds a "live born" child is one who is completely outside the womb and alive INSTEAD of attaching it to a bill that was SPECIFICALLY designed to (in the case of Florida) prevent legal late-term abortions and/or (in the case of Virginia) designed to make it extremely dangerous (from a civil and criminal liability standpoint) to perform ANY abortion.
Btw, don't you ever accuse me of supporting abortion simply because I oppose criminalization AND the despicable tactics of the RIGHT WING abortion opponents who will not consider other ways to end that great tragedy.
But, then, why should I expect anything else from you?
NurseBob writes:
fatherc,
Here is what you should have said, had you expected any credibility for your position:
The procedure known as "partial-birth abortion" is a horror, and cleary infanticide. Those who support such a procedure, including those in the "pro-choice community," are guilty of supporting infanticide, regardless of any attempt to obfuscate or spin the matter.
The case in Virginia was a horror and clearly a case of infanticide. The law should be changed immediately to protect all children born, regardless of the status of the umbilical cord. Any, including those in the "pro-choice community," who oppose changing the law to protect born children are guilty of supporting infanticide, regardless of any attempt to obfuscate or spin the matter.
All states should have laws requiring medical care be provided to all children who survive abortions, without qualification. Any, including those in the "pro-choice community," who oppose providing medical care to these children are guilty of supporting infanticide, regardless of attempts to obfuscate or spin the matter.
That would have been a good beginning, rather than insisting on the absurd and clearly false position that the "pro-choice community" doesn't supports infanticide. That is clearly false and, what's more, I suspect you know it is false. You took for yourself a position that was impossible to defend, given the evidence, and your intransigence in holding it reveals the stubborness of your personality, not the weakness of the evidence.
Open your eyes, sir. Your "pro-choice community" is drowning in the blood of innocents. It will continence no compromise or limits on its primary goal of securing for mothers the freedom to kill their children by abortion and, if necessary, infanticide. These are the facts. All your capitalizing will not change these facts.
NurseBob writes:
Ah, I detect a slight mitigation of your original position. In your first post you claimed that, "to imply that the pro-choice community approves of infanticide is an outrageous and indefensible lie," while in your most recent post you narrowed your field somewhat, claiming this position only for "Planned Parenthood, or any other mainstream pro-choice group."
While still clearly false, I suppose that's some progress.
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