Ignoring Human Rights Has Become the American Way
The headline, “Outcry in America as Pregnant Women Who Lose Babies Face Murder Charges,” speaks volumes about the lengths that some will pursue to express misplaced outrage for the sole purpose of defending the reproductive rights of women. The lead case in the article involves Rennie Gibbs, a young woman who became pregnant at the age of 15 and subsequently delivered a stillborn infant at 36 weeks gestational age.
Gibbs was charged with “depraved-heart murder” because she had been abusing cocaine during her pregnancy. What does this term mean? According to Wikipedia, it is a legitimate legal term that refers to crimes that demonstrate “callous disregard for human life.” If no death occurs, the term is used to define reckless endangerment. Pro-aborts didn’t see it that way.
Feminist attorney Lynn Paltrow decried the prosecution of Gibbs, saying, “Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws. … It’s turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights.”
Now wait a moment, please. Gibbs was not forced to use cocaine, nor was she forced to get pregnant. What she perhaps never realized was that, from the instant her child’s life began, she was an expectant mother who had a moral obligation to care for herself and her preborn baby. At no point did Gibbs part with her “constitutional personhood,” nor at any point did her preborn baby have a recognized “constitutional personhood.” When that baby was stillborn, he was recognized as a child who could have lived outside the womb.
The fact of the matter is that feminists like Paltrow are not as concerned about the tragic situation of young women like Gibbs as they are about the possibility that the preborn human being will be legally recognized as a human person. In that regard, they are partners with all sorts of folks who have a similar view regarding the human being’s identity prior to birth. In that category of “anti-human-rights for all including the preborn” you can find human embryonic stem cell researchers, professional in vitro fertilization specialists, and a cadre of bioethicists, not to mention pro-aborts. The list is extensive.
On the narrow topic of dishonest claims regarding human embryonic stem cell research, for example, Professor Augusto Pessina has written that there is so much hype involved in the marketing of human embryonic stem cell research that it is difficult for the public to sort out the facts. He explained that the priorities of those who promote the hype are inspired by economics and the single ethical principle “that it is lawful to do whatever is technically possible.” He notes, “‘Stem cells’ has become a sort of magic word which produces added value (progressive) to everything: from cosmetics to the most absurd therapeutic possibilities.”
Exactly my point!
As long as the law and the public turn a blind eye, refusing to acknowledge human rights for all including preborn children, the callous disregard for the innocent will continue. It’s all about the money, the quest to create the “perfect” human being, and the right of a mother to choose life or death for her preborn baby. This is why in Great Britain over 700 women who have gone through an in vitro fertilization process have ultimately aborted their children. The only difference between these women and Gibbs is that, because her child is not legally a person, there is no law requiring an expectant mother to carry her child to term. But when someone like Gibbs acts intentionally by abusing an illegal substance, her stillborn, this able-to-survive-outside-the-womb baby, is a human being; therefore the crime can be tried in a court of law.
If you think this entire madness is based on a schizophrenic attitude toward who is and who is not a person, you have acknowledged something very unique—the truth. But in America that’s a hard commodity to come by these days. The American way is to ascribe rights to the born while conveniently ignoring the not yet born in the vast majority of cases.
Aborting a person is not a crime. Ingesting drugs which negatively affect a child who could have survived the womb is a crime. The end result is really quite simple: human rights are merely a matter of opinion.
