Planned Parenthood hack testifies before the Florida Legislature about killing babies who are mistakenly born alive after a botched abortion:
Bottom line: Planned Parenthood policy 'if you want a dead baby, you get a dead baby'.
Gosnell isn't such an outlier.
HT: commentor Ben
Bottom line: Planned Parenthood policy 'if you want a dead baby, you get a dead baby'.
Gosnell isn't such an outlier.
HT: commentor Ben
The president agrees with Planned Parenthood on this, as with everything, hence his vote against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act when he was a state senator in Illinois.
ReplyDeleteSo does Barbara Boxer.
“I think when you bring your baby home, when your baby is born … the baby belongs to your family and has all the rights.
Killing children is all old hat for these people. It does not shock them because they aren't prudes like us.
--Francisca S.
Liberals think that violence never solved anything...except unplanned pregnancies. Violence "solves" that very well.
ReplyDeleteBen
"...when you bring your baby home..."
ReplyDeleteWhat's the NewSpeak orwellonym for an infant between the "fetus" and the threshold of the home nursery? A "betweenus"? Just askin'.
On a related note, Kouider, et. al. (A Neural Marker of Perceptual Consciousness in Infants, Science, 4/2013) have convinced themselves that infants do not show their faith-based "neural marker" for consciousness until 5 mo.
I fully expect to see a push to extend the window for infanticide to 5 mos of age now that they have a faith basis for "personhood".
Yes, I believe KW has gone on record saying something to the extent that since newborn babies can't form memories, killing them is okay.
DeleteBen
If consciousness is a marker, KW is a target.
DeleteDespite the teachings of the Church, in Europe during the Middle Ages infant abandonment was practiced on a gigantic scale with absolute impunity. For most of human history infanticide of unwanted children was the norm, not the exception. People knew then what we are even more certain of now, and that is, compared to most mammals, human babies are born very immature, with none of the higher brain functions that make us uniquely human. In every measure, including emotional development, an adult dog is far more mentally developed than a newborn human. Those are just the facts. Deal with it.
DeleteConsidering the facts, I’m totally comfortable with allowing abortion up to the moment of natural child birth without exception and for any reason. I have not said it’s OK to kill newborns. You have to draw the line somewhere, and natural birth seems like the most reasonable place.
-KW
Considering the facts, I'm in favor of drawing the line between civilized human beings and those who promote and justify the slaughter of infants, and allowing the latter to be dispatched to their eternal torment, where they can do no more damage.
DeleteI knew KW would drop in soon enough to defend killing children, both inside and outside the womb.
DeleteKW supports killing children right up to the moment of natural birth and not one moment sooner. If a woman is big as a house, due to give birth tomorrow, KW says it's okay to pull of the medieval weaponry and kill the child growing inside of her. If the child is delivered first and then killed, as was the case in the Gosnell clinic, KW supports it.
KW, if you don't support killing children after "natural birth"--not any old birth, just the natural kind--what then was the point of your soliloquy concerning infant abandonment in the Middle Ages? You do realize that that was the Middle Ages, right? Is that your model? Is that what you'd like to go back to? If not, what was the point of mentioning it?
This is what we're up against, folks. This abortion debate is not about some two celled organism and philosophical musings about a soul. That's outright obfuscation. We're talking about full scale murder on a scale the world has never seen before. This is Hitler plus Stalin plus Mao, all rolled up in one.
TRISH
Of course, he does support the killing of children after natural birth. He's got no moral problem with it. He said himself that he just placed the line there arbitrarily, because he had to "draw it somewhere." But he is explicitly arguing that it's morally licit to kill children at that point and beyond.
DeleteIt's one of the times I disagree with KW. I'm pro-choice, but not pro-abortion. I think women have a limited right to abortion by choice up to 20 weeks by gestation, because there's evidence that neurological development only allows the fetus to feel pain by 24 weeks.
DeleteThe woman has rights. So too does her conceptus (I use conceptus to avoid having to use fertilized unimplanted ovum, morula, blastula, embryo, fetus etc). An unimplanted fertilized ovum has few rights (a large number will naturally fail to implant or spontaneously abort). A full term fetus obviously has the rights of a newborn baby.
You have to set a dividing line; I use 20 weeks.
That said, I think that abortion by choice should be rare, as a last resort, for failure of contraception (which should be readily available and affordable), rape or incest. It is a surgical procedure, after all, with a risk of complications to the woman.
RU486 if readily available should eliminate most surgical abortions and result in abortions much earlier than 20 weeks (actually, it's only effective up to 9 weeks or so).
After 20 weeks there should be a good reason for an abortion. A serious risk to the health or life of the woman or a serious irremedial abnormality in the fetus (such as anencephaly). It's not possible to legislate the allowed indications; but it's necessary to set up some sort of mechanism to decide whether it's justifiable, such as an independent panel of doctors.
It's also necessary to distinguish between abortion and early delivery. A woman with eclamptic convulsions has an early delivery, even if the fetus is non-viable by dates, because the choice is between having a live mother and a possibly live fetus and a dead mother and dead fetus.
There is evidence that late term fetuses can form memories. Not that they can be consciously recalled though. It's suggested by the evidence that newborn babies respond more to the language they heard in utero than to other languages. Not definite evidence though. And memories are often more confabulated than recalled.
Crusader Rex,
DeleteHumans (as Homo sapiens) go back at least 200,000 years. What the Spartans did 3,000 years ago is an insignificant fraction of human history.
It's impossible to assert that infanticide was definitely a normal feature of most human societies. But it was used in nomadic hunter-gatherer societies such as the San people in cases of twins and malformed babies, because infants had to be carried by the mother for up to 4 years in moving from place to place. It was considered moral for a new mother to kill her second twin or a malformed newborn.
And for most of human history, humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers until they began to settle down 10,000 years ago.
Bach,
DeleteNice to see you draw a line, even if I disagree on the position of it. As you know, conception is the line I draw.
As for memories during infancy (and childhood), I would suggest that such abilities develop at different stages for different individuals. The use of language, written script, and even rudimentary maths are evidence of this. Some people can remember being a toddler, others cannot.
Your comments on human history I generally agree with, but you are talking about pre-history and making an educated guess based on current/recent nomadic cultures. That's standard fare, and I would gladly concede that is consensus... but I would NEVER assume the current consensus is entirely correct - only workable.
Further you're figures are dated. We have just pushed the envelope for settled cultures back another 4,000 (now pre 12,500 BC) years recently and that may figure may well go MUCH further.
It is sheer academic arrogance (or dogma?) for historians and the field workers to assert this or that civilization is the 'oldest' without a HUGE 'yet' attached. That is not to say some or even many of these early cultures did not practice human sacrifice of all sorts and for many reasons - just that such barbarism is not isolated to hunter-gatherer groups.
As you noted an assertion that infanticide was the norm and not the exception is a baseless claim.
bach:
DeleteWhat happens to a baby at 20 weeks of gestation, that confers the right to life?
Crusader Rex,
DeleteMemories, particularly from childhood, aren't reliable. Most, if not all, memories are largely confabulated. If a person remembers an event, it's certain that only a few details will be actually accurately recalled. Most of the details will be fabricated (confabulated), filled in from other similar events or provided by other sources (such as parents telling the child what had happened - their memories being unreliable too!)
Infanticide being the norm isn't a baseless claim. It's a reasonable, albeit unverifiable one. Infanticide occurring in most nomadic hunter-gatherer societies can neither be proved nor disproved.
Michael,
Delete'What happens to a baby at 20 weeks of gestation, that confers the right to life?'
Nothing. It's an arbitrary cutoff point, no more biological than allowing a person to drink alcohol at 18. It's about granting legal rights, and balancing the rights of a woman versus the rights of her conceptus.
It's a matter of legal rights, not biology.
You still haven't given an adequate answer to your defence of the lawyers representing a Catholic Colorado hospital in using Colorado law which states that unborn foetuses don't have legal rights, in order to have a malpractice suit involving the death of 7 month gestation twins dismissed.
It's very much an 'own goal' since three Colorado Catholic bishops expressed disquiet at the tactics of the lawyers. And all you needed to say was that the lawyers were wrong, not the Catholic hospital (I think, based on the facts, the hospital would have successfully defended the malpractice suit).
And I think that 7 month gestation twins should have legal rights.
What is it about a baby at 19 weeks of gestation that renders it without the right to life, in your view?
Deleteon the Colorado case, you seem stuck on it, as you apparently believe that it gives you a rhetorical edge, which you sorely need.
DeleteIt's a non-issue. The Catholic hospital's lawyers are simply citing law, not advocating or making law. The philosophy of the Church is not law in Colorado, and the personhood of the babies is defined in a specific way.
Tort is about law, not about the defendant's philosophy. The lawyers are doing their job, and would be engaged in malpractice of a legal sort if they did not.
Bach,
DeleteRegarding memories: I don't buy it. Sorry. I am familiar with the studies you seem to be referencing and see them as generalized bunk. Typical reductionist nonsense. One size does not fit all. Different people display differing levels of clarity of recall. That includes childhood memories.
Regarding baseless historical claims (those lacking supporting evidence - argued by mere assertion or assumption): That is EXACTLY what KW's claims about the middle ages are.
Perhaps you thought I was referring to our discussion on prehistoric hunter-gatherers? Allow me to clarify: I was not.
There is indeed some basis to claim infanticide was/is accepted in some cultures (sedentary too). But, I am sure you would agree that does not make murdering children 'civilized', 'good' or 'right' for modern cultures...which was the general gist of KW's nonsensical comment.
Michael,
DeleteNo. The Colorado case is about 'legal rights', not biology. The lawyers might have been 'right' in using the law. Just as abortionists are 'right' in using the law to legally perform abortions at 20 weeks. Kermit Gosnell was actually breaking the law in performing late abortions.
Anyway. Lawyers give advice to their clients and accept their clients' instructions as to how the case should be defended. The Colorado Catholic hospital could have, but didn't, instruct their lawyers to defend the malpractice case on the basis of the facts of the case, which I think they would have won.
There's no legal malpractice if lawyers offer advice to their clients, and it's rejected.
The cutoff point in regard to abortions is a matter of balancing rights of the woman and her conceptus. Before 20 weeks, the woman's rights trump those of the foetus.
The law is the law, bach. The age of legal personhood in Colorado is determined by statute, not by defendant's counsel.
DeleteGet over it. Your argument is stupid.
Michael,
DeleteNo. Your argument is moronic. Lawyers represent their clients. They give advice and accept instructions. If a client, in a hypothetical case, wants a ridiculous defence put forward, then the lawyer is obliged to do so, after giving advice against it.
The Catholic hospital was entitled to defend themselves against a charge of malpractice, using the facts of the case, as it appears the three Colorado Catholic bishops believe when they expressed disquiet at the tactics of the lawyers.
Relying on a legal definition of non-personhood for 7 month gestation foetuses leaves the incorrect impression that the Catholic hospital was guilty of malpractice.
Although, you're such a great legal authority that you're able to predict in advance the results of a Colorado malpractice suit, assess the adequacy of the evidence against the Boston marathon bomber just a few days after the event and point out where the courts have got their decisions wrong (so you can replace all the appeals courts too).
Crusader:
DeleteMedieval justice was notoriously harsh. Child killing would have gotten you decapitated and buried in a shallow grave outside the churchyard in most cases. It was harder to get CAUGHT for murder, but the punishment was much more severe.
Yes indeed:
In former times civil laws against all kinds of abortion were very severe among Christian nations. Among the Visigoths, the penalty was death, or privation of sight, for the mother who allowed it and for the father who consented to it, and death for the abortionist. In Spain, the woman guilty of it was buried alive. An edict of the French King Henry II in 1555, renewed by Louis XIV in 1708, inflicted capital punishment for adultery and abortion combined. Later French law (i.e., early twentieth century) punished the abortionist with imprisonment, and physicians, surgeons, and pharmacists, who prescribe or furnish the means, with the penalty of forced labour.
Also, regarding the claim that "science" tells us infants do not have memory, this is just flat-out false. In fact, we know that babies are able to learn various things in the womb (see here for just one example) so clearly they have memory at least from that point.
As sick as KW's butchering of the facts is, what's really sick is what it reveals about him personally: He clearly started with a desire for the murder of living, crying babies to be justified in advance of any facts, and then went about twisting, butchering, and cherry-picking both history and science to support and justify that predefined, bloodthirsty desire. What do we call such people, who desire the killing of the helpless and innocent for its own sake? I believe we use words like "sociopath" and "psychopath."
But hey, if KW really wants to bring back the Medieval way of dealing with people who openly advocate what he's advocating, and if he wants to justify the elimination of humans who "lack the higher brain functions that make us unique" (such as, say, his own lack of basic humanity, human empathy, and normal moral reasoning ability) then he's welcome to it.
My second link in the previous post was apparently messed up, so here it is: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091105092607.htm
DeleteAn excellent video series, this one on this specific subject.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NxOWyumLufA
Looking at this video I was reminded of a documentary on how the Nazis planned the Final Solution: it was to be cold-blooded and efficient.
DeleteIt is really disgusting to see people planning to "expire" what should and is the greatest gift of all: life!