Woman Leaves Baby to Die in Bag, Gets 13 Years; Abortion Prompts Infanticide
by Cathy Ruse
October 16, 2009
LifeNews.com Note: Cathy Ruse is the Senior Fellow for Legal Studies at the Family Research Council. She is also the former spokeswoman for the pro-life office of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
How can anyone ignore the irony in this awful story reported in the Washington Post yesterday?
A young woman walks out into a field with a pink towel, scissors, and a plastic bag, gives birth to a daughter, cuts the umbilical cord and leaves the baby to die.
Of course she could have had an abortionist legally kill the child.
The Supreme Court case of Doe v. Bolton mandates that an abortion be legal even after viability if an abortion doctor cites emotional or “familial” reasons for the abortion. During a post-arrest interview the woman said she had been raped, and the prosecutor said the woman got rid of the baby because she was afraid the man she was living with, whom she considered her husband, would break up with her for having another man’s child. Plenty of legal grounds for a late-term abortion.
Assistant State’s Attorney Renee Battle-Brooks argued that whether she was impregnated because she was raped was irrelevant. “That doesn’t make [the baby’s] life any less valuable,” Battle-Brooks said. “That baby struggled for breath in that plastic bag. She was alone, she was cold and she was hungry.”
Last month a 33-year old Rhode Island woman was sentenced to 25 years for killing her newborn daughter.
The baby was found in a plastic garbage bag under a laundry appliance in the woman’s parents’ home. Judge Robert Krause of Providence County said, “Not to impose a substantial jail sentence … would simply devalue the life of a child.” Krause added: “No civilized society is prepared to do that and neither am I.”
My point in raising these cases is not to argue for criminal penalties for women who have abortions – no one in the pro-life movement seeks that – but to show the irony in our law, and the striking quotes from those in the legal system as they recognize and defend the humanity of the youngest of babies. They sound so much like pro-lifers.
One day, God willing, everyone will speak this way about children, even before birth.
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