Pro-Life Juxtaposition

Two stories in the news form a curious juxtaposition. There’s the case of a rescued rat, purportedly female. We won’t delve into how one sexes a rat, but perhaps her sex is serendipitous to our juxtaposition–pertinent that she is a she and that she’s probably also pregnant, which may explain her unfortunate encounter with a too-snug sewer grating. [emphasis added to quotes]

Oh, just look at that pitiful face.

In Germany, a fat rat got trapped in a sewer grate. … It took several volunteer firefighters to rescue the animal. Animal rescuers said the rat likely got stuck because of its size. Pictures and video of the rescue mission look intense. The rodent has returned to her glorious sewer home.

Watch the video at the link to see how valiantly the team of firefighters took up the challenge, working hard, preserving the life of that poor creature and perhaps also the lives of her unborn offspring.

Then there’s this story:

A moral catastrophe unfolded on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Monday. Forty-four Democratic senators voted against legislation that would have required doctors to give the same care to infants who survive abortion procedures that they would give to any other infant.

One after another, Democratic senators took to the floor to smear the bill as an attack on women’s health care, a baseless criticism that they failed to substantiate. In the process, they revealed their belief that allowing unwanted infants to perish after birth constitutes a form of women’s health care. …

No part of the born-alive bill limits abortion access or regulates abortion methods in any way. It involves abortions only to the extent that the infants in question survived them. Nor does the bill mandate any particular kind of care for these infants; it merely requires that these nearly aborted newborns be afforded “the same degree” of care that “any other child born alive at the same gestational age” would receive.

Why would anyone vote against providing medical care to a living infant?

Oh, just look at that sweet face:

To gloss over the despicable implications of their vote, Democrats cited the alleged infrequency of live births after an abortion attempt.

Doctors’ and abortion-rights groups say it is extremely unusual for live infants to be born during attempted late-term abortions, which they say usually occur when the baby is extremely deformed or deemed unable to survive after birth.

In such cases, families sometimes decide they want to induce labor so they can spend time with the infant before it dies.

“It only happens in instances in which we know that the baby will not ultimately survive, and a choice has been pre-made to provide just comfort care” to the baby so the parents can be with it, said Dr. Colleen McNicholas, a fellow with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Is late-term abortion rare? Hardly. For example, there were 8000+ deaths from late-term abortion in 2015 alone.

How many infants are born alive after an abortion? Statistics are sketchy, deliberately so, but this story from 2013 gives us an idea:

“We do have some sense in that with perinatal infant mortality data it is recorded,” Rep. [Cary] Pigman [an emergency medicine physician] told legislators … “In 2010, there were 24,586 perinatal deaths in the United States. Perinatal defines as being from the 22nd week of gestation to seven days post delivery.”

“Those are all coded by international classification,” he noted. Regarding babies who die after a botched abortion: “As of 2010, 1,270 infants were reported in that category — and I emphasize reported,” Pigman explained.

In other words, more than 1,200 babies died following a failed abortion and their … deaths were reported as “mortality subsequent to an abortion.” As the representative emphasized, those are only the number of reported deaths following botched abortions, and the actual figures could be higher.

If a single child survives abortion, that child deserves his or her chance at life. That child deserves–is endowed by our Creator with–the same constitutionally protected rights that all human beings enjoy. Life being first among them.

In such cases, the “choice” is obviously not about the mother’s body. The choice these people wish to make is the choice to ensure that the living child dies from lack of health care that would have been provided had the child been wanted by his parent(s).

Anything less for a wanted child would be called child neglect and abuse. Such children would probably be made wards of the state, on an emergency basis, and care would be given, as it should be.

Consider the implications of what that doctor said, above:

Families sometimes decide they want to induce labor so they can spend time with the infant before it dies.

Are families deciding to abort a fetus? No. They’re deciding to “induce labor” to produce a living child. Once the child is born, then, their chance to “choose” abortion is over.

There is no such thing as post-birth abortion!

When labor is induced, a child is born, just as thousands of children are born every day via induced labor.

What these parents and doctors actually want to “choose” is a “right” to ensure that the deformed or unwanted child does indeed die, but after birth, not before.

How early is labor induced? We’re talking about late-term abortions here, but inducing labor to bring forth a living child so the parents can spend time with the child isn’t abortion. Is it?

Or is that the point? Are they trying to preserve a fiction that it’s not an abortion, but at the same time ensuring that the result is the same as an abortion? It’s sick.

Again, we’re talking about late-term abortion here. If the pregnancy ran its full course and if the baby would indeed “ultimately” die, wouldn’t the parents still be able to spend time with the child before that sadly happens?

Why then induce labor? Why an abortion at this late date? Why not allow nature to take its normal course? Forgive me for wondering whether labor is induced in these cases to ensure that the child dies from prematurity, because the child may not actually “ultimately” die or because a “deformed” child may not necessarily die from the deformity.

What would happen to a doctor who induced labor to prematurely deliver a wanted child, whose life was then put at risk from premature birth?

Is there a difference between feticide within the womb and inducing labor at a point at which a premature child would require medical intervention to preserve its life, but then “choosing” only comfort care to ensure that the living child will die (aka infanticide)?

One has to wonder if children with Down Syndrome are meeting this fate. Read here about a German abortion survivor who had Down Syndrome.

In Germany an estimated nine out of 10 Down syndrome diagnoses lead to an abortion.

Yet there’s a good deal of compassion for rats in Germany.

One also has to wonder what happens in this country if a child stubbornly refuses to succumb. Is the child starved to death? Does it, will it, die of thirst? What exactly constitutes “comfort care?”

For whatever despicable reason, the Supreme Court and state legislatures have invented for women a “right” to abortion. The “right” to choose what to do, as the saying goes, with their own bodies. 

Once born, however, even “extremely deformed” babies or babies expected (by someone) to “not ultimately survive” are without doubt still human beings who deserve their God-given right to life.

By the way, every last one of us will “not ultimately survive.” Does that fact make murder okay?

If all of this makes you queasy, join the club.

Below are two videos featuring Gianna Jessen, another real-life abortion survivor, who was born alive, and thankfully remained alive, after an attempted abortion.

Consider again the juxtaposition:

Our world has room for compassion and mercy for born and unborn rats–plague-carrying vermin, cute though they may be.

And yet the Democrats seem to have no room in their hearts for compassion and mercy for born and unborn human beings.

Preserve the lives of abortion survivors!

And pray that the unborn get back their right to life.

Human lives matter!

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