Politics: January 2002 Archives

I watched Law & Order: Special Victims Unit from Friday night, and it was about a man who killed a baby by ripping it from its mother's womb.

Yeah, nice, I know.

My daughter has been in her mother's womb for just over six months now. I play games with my daughter, and she is just into her third trimester. I tap, and she taps back. She recognizes my voice and even my touch on her mommy's tummy. She is completly viable, as viable as any born child. She is my little baby girl, and I love her.

So when discussing how to charge this criminal, they decided they couldn't go for murder at first, because a baby is not considered human until it is fully out of the womb and breathing. A lawyer and a cop said, "well, if we say this baby is a human, then we have to say all abortions at this late term are wrong too." Yes. Yes, of course. Of course it is wrong.

Instead of resolving this paradox by simply saying "yes", they decided to let it remain a logical inconsistency in their minds. They knew the answer. They looked right at it. But they couldn't fathom a world where women don't have "choice" to kill a baby that is able to breathe and cry and play games.

Indeed, in the trial portion, they almost lost the case because they proved the baby had taken a breath, but not that it had yet left the womb. Apparently, somehow a baby can be breathing and crying on its own, but still be partially in the womb, and it is acceptable and legal to kill it. Because if you're in the womb, you're not a live person.

So they say my daughter is not human because she's hasn't yet left the womb, all to satisfy the illogical notion that some women should be able to kill that child if they wish to. She can breathe, she can cry, she can play games, and we can still kill her, because if we couldn't, well, then we wouldn't be free to kill other little boys and girls!

What the hell is wrong with this damned world?