Democrats Upped the Abortion Ante When They Defended Murdering a Baby Born Alive
It’s difficult to take seriously the claims and labels of “extremism” in reference to heart-beat laws when the side making those allegations stood silently as one of their own advocates for killing a baby born alive.
Yesterday, Alabama blew up the internet by passing and then signing into law a heartbeat law, making it possible to prosecute abortion providers who perform abortions after a baby’s heartbeat is detected. Despite the minuscule number of abortions performed in the case of rape or incest (which make up an estimated 1.5% of all abortions — and that’s a high estimate), Alabama’s bill made no such concessions, leaving one exception only — the life of the mother.
As Mary blogged, by design, the law is meant to provoke a legal challenge and just might save a few innocent lives in the meantime.
The media and the Democrats only have themselves to blame.
In January, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (Democrat) defended murdering a baby who was born alive, but who might have “severe deformities.”
“The infant would be delivered; the infant would be kept comfortable; the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desire, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Watch here:
VA gov on abortion this morning:
“If a mother is in labor…the infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians & mother” pic.twitter.com/cc15pVLjIQ
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) January 30, 2019
Northam was responding a bill introduced by state Delegate Tran which would further loosen restrictions on late-term abortions up to birth. Stacey covered the story here.
The story was almost completely blacklisted. None of the major networks would touch it with a ten-foot pole, neither did Democrats denounce Northam’s barbaric comments. And Northam is not some obscure figure in this tale, he’s the Governor of the state of Virginia!
In response, the US Senate got involved. Sen. Sasse (R-NE) introduced the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Democrats killed that too.
By the end of February, public opinion had turned dramatically and swiftly as more Americans began identifying as pro-life. Doubly bad news for Democrats because the charge towards life was spearheaded not by right-wingers, but by young Democrats.
Fast forward to now and the media and Democrats (but I repeat myself) are losing their minds over Alabama’s law. The Hand Maids are crying, and suddenly, we’re living in a post-apocalyptic theocracy because a state, albeit a small one, is willing to take a stand for the lives of the unborn.
It’s difficult to take seriously the claims and labels of “extremism” in reference to heart-beat laws when the side making those allegations stood silently as one of their own advocates for killing a baby born alive.
Democrats really stepped in it when they forsook “safe, legal, and rare” in exchange for a nationwide push to codify infanticide up to and after birth. Despite the media’s attempts to sweep the issue under the rug, the damage is done and as a result, the backlash is coming from the heartland’s state houses who are ready for a fight.
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What happens to a pregnant woman when her/their baby reaches the age of viability? Is it a soft threshold, will she be forced to give birth to her/their child, or can the baby still be legally planned?
Clearly you know little to nothing about having babies. By the time an infant is viable at 20-23 weeks, the mother still goes thru labor and deliveries the baby, whether it is born alive, born dead or cut up in pieces. There is not magic wand or medicine to make the child disappear from the mothers womb.
That’s my point exactly. Under the current Pro-Choice establishment, the mother is still deprived of a choice upon her baby reaching the age of viability. So the question is: when and by whose choice does a human life acquire and retain her right to life? Is it at 3 trimesters, 2, perhaps, around one month with development of biological processes and presumptive beginning of consciousness? Does it begin when a woman and man have sex, with the well understood process of human reproduction? Should edge cases influence or determine what is normalized, tolerated, rejected?
It is a good point, and one I’ve made for years. It is THE central question. You will never get agreement on this issue, you will only get consensus. You will get more consensus on a morning after pill than you will on hacking up a living, breathing baby. And why not, given the pro-choice logic that a mother should have the right not to be burdened by an unwanted child, should it stop right at birth? Why not 3 years into it when the child really makes it hard to study for finals or get that promotion that requires travel? Why not at any point of financial hardship following a divorce?
Her “choice” expired when she spread her legs. The point of “planning” expired when she made the decision, consciously or otherwise, to have sex while she was fertile. After that nature takes its course or she “plans” to kill her own child, whether at one week, one month, or 9 months. And let’s avoid the euphemisms. When you say “planned”, you mean “killed”.
Republicans should challenge the NY and VA laws on behalf of any babies killed. Surely these infanticide / “partial birth abortions” are unconstitutional as well.
The Supreme Court says they’re not. And I believe the current court would endorse that decision. Until there is a new majority on the court that is unfortunately the law.
You state the SC would say they are not and then follow it up with “I believe”
I think the part about “I Believe “is the correct one and it is more “I wish…”
Don’t expect any of the 5 “Conservative” judges to hand you a victory on infanticide.
You’re an idiot. The Supreme Court says these laws are not unconstitutional. That is not a belief, it is an undisputable fact. You are not entitled to disagree with it.
Whether the current court, if given the opportunity, would endorse that decision, is of course something that nobody can know for sure, but I believe it would, and unlike you I know exactly what I’m talking about. Very few people who know anything about the court would disagree with me.
You accuse me of wishful thinking, which is just bizarre, because where on earth could you possibly have got the idea that I would like such a result? But in fact it is you who has mistaken your wishes for reality. If you think the current court would overturn Roe and Casey you live on some other planet, or are possibly a visitor from a better future.
I’ve seen you make some very weird argument, but none stranger than arguing that murder is not unconstitutional.
That is not what Milhouse said, though, txvet. Milhouse is profoundly pro-life, but he’s not a fantasist. I agree that the Supreme Court, as currently constructed, will likely not overturn Roe or Casey. I’m super pro-life, too, but it’s crazy to think this current Court will do anything other than uphold the prior Court’s opinion. Noting that something we would like to happen likely won’t is not damnable heresy, right?
“severe deformities.”
‘Severe Deformities’ today, ‘Minor handicaps like near-sightedness’ tomorrow, ‘freckles’ next week. We all know where the Dems are headed with this evil.
“Severe deformities” including: Down Syndrome (e.g. Ireland), feminine female (e.g. China), transgender/homosexual (e.g. Muslim lands), social progress (e.g. America).
I have no love for Islam. But, in Muslim executions of homosexuals, an Islamic state is executing adults who know the laws of those lands (albeit usually the one victimized by a more prominent, well-connected, and wealthier man). Since the “gay gene” or “prenantal intrauterine hormonal imbalance” or whatever the current scientific holy grail to make homosexuality something other than a choice happens to be, has still not been identified, Iranian flying lessons do not count as abortions–unless they are VERY late term.
Of course, you’re right. I am basing my analysis on a forward-looking progression of science and technology, and where there already exists religious/moral support for the change.
Rush Limbaugh yesterday –
“What do you expect to happen when the Democrat Party gives standing ovations to legislation permitting the killing of babies who have been born? What do you expect to happen? What does anybody expect? This country has not gone over to the dark side of liberalism, in toto. We haven’t gotten anywhere close to that.
You people that stand up and applaud the murder of children after they’ve been born, you think there’s not gonna be any opposition to that from places all over the country? This is just one of 16 states that is moving in this direction as a reaction. You got Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia, who advocated the same thing.
—
What do you expect to happen? You expect people just to sit by and say, “Oh, okay. America’s going down the tubes”? That’s not at all what’s gonna happen.
People are not gonna tolerate this kind of thing. They’re not gonna stand idly by and watch American culture and society and particularly around the right to life just be destroyed like this. So it was only a matter of time and for everybody that thinks what’s going on in Alabama, “Well, this is a little over the top, though, Rush. Come on, now. This reaction, this is a little overboard.” What do you mean, over the top? Where were you when they were giving a standing ovation in the New York state senate, when they passed legislation permitting the killing of babies that had been born?
Where were you when the New York City mayor lit up the buildings in that town all pink or whatever color to celebrate it? Where were you? That’s not a little overboard? “Well, Rush, it’s been trending in that direction. We just gotta understand women are gonna do what they’re gonna do.” It’s not gonna be just understood. There are going to be people that are not gonna tolerate that, and that is what we are seeing.”
I have heard it said that identity politics is the father of nationalism.
If that is so, then the people who advocate for murdering babies AFTER they are born, are the fathers of these “no abortion” laws.
We can bring back the good old days of abortions by criminals.
Now that Drug Prohibition is ending an abortion Prohibition is just the thing. To keep the criminals in business.
Democrats got a LOT of mileage over that before Roe.
There is either a missing link in sexual education, or a social liberalism, that obfuscates the well understood process of human reproduction and evolution, and normalizes a dysfunction that debases human life for social (i.e. selective-child) and medical (i.e. recycled-child) progress. Pro-Choice is a peculiar quasi-religion that offers two choices too late. It is incumbent upon civilized society to mitigates its progress. That said, what happens to the mother and child at the age of viability under the current establishment?
Good idea. Let’s legalize everything. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Wanna shoot your neighbor because he is playing his music too loud? Go ahead. He will just have to be faster on the draw that you are. Want to have sex with the girl waiting for the bus? Go ahead. As long he is not surrounded by armed family members of guards, have at. Want to get a Rolex for free? No problem, walk into the jewelry store and steal one a gunpoint.
The liberalization of drug laws has done nothing but increased drug related problems. Drug related illness and hospital visits are way up. Damages, due to activities while using drugs, are up. Homelessness and mental health issues are up, in areas where drug laws have been liberalized. It has also increased illicit drug sales, as only the businesses have to pay for licensing. When alcohol was legalized, following prohibition, the manufacture and sale of untaxed alcoholic beverages continued [moonshiners still operate in parts of the country]. Alcohol related physical illnesses increased. Damages, due to alcohol use, increased. Homelessness and mental illness increased. Using the argument that something should be allowed, simply because people will do it whether it is legal or not is the lamest argument in the entire history of the human race.
The flip side of that lame argument is that government has any power to do anything about it. Also lame.
I’m not sure what your point is? But, if you mean that government has no power to regulate human activity, that is exactly what governments are for.
A government is set up by the members of society to regulate the behavior of the members of that society. If there is NO regulation of behavior, if everything is legal, then you have anarchy. Nowhere in the history of mankind has any society, based upon anarchy, ever existed. It can not exist, because human beings, by their nature, are amoral opportunists.
Obviously.
But there’s a yuuge difference between anarchy and Prohibition. Where in that range should government operate, and where can it operate? Those two points are, as history shows us, not the same.
I don’t know if you are being intentionally obtuse or if you really do not understand why we have governments.
People, if left to their own devices, will simply do whatever they want to do, until they re stopped, usually by the use of physical force. That is anarchy. What government does is allow the citizenry to decide what behavior will be PROHIBITED and under what conditions. In the US, our system of government is designed to allow the citizenry to compromise as to the extent of the prohibitions placed upon members of society.
Prohibition of alcohol was driven by the emerging woman’s suffrage movement. It was doomed simply because it was not enforced. The main reason why it was repealed was the desperate need for tax revenue during the Great Depression. And, though criminal enterprises were born, during Prohibition, it reduced alcohol consumption by over 50% [along with corresponding reductions in alcohol related diseases, injuries and social crimes] and that reduction in consumption continued until the WWII years. When you see a publicly sold commodity, which is heavily taxed by government, it usually means that commodity is nor good for people. There is a reason why they are called “sin taxes”.
Now, interestingly, nearly all of the homeless are recreational drug users. And, as most do not have jobs, one has to wonder where they get the money for the drugs.
Black Markets are the people’s response to government overreach.
We used to call that Natural Law.
It was used in the USSR.
It is being used in America.
Natural Law used to be part of American’s understanding of politics.
That understanding went away with Alcohol Prohibition. The reality never went away.
You will have to live with it.
As to problems? Alcohol causes far more. We should ban it. Again. /sarc
Actually, the New York State laws that you approve of so much make it so just about anyone can perform abortions, not just doctors, up to and after birth of the baby.
Back-Alley Abortions here we come!
Your strange fixation on legal details and straw men about republicans being somehow authoritarian tyrannical freaks conveniently avoids the fact that we’re trying to save precious lives, lives that apparently have no value to you.
I can open my own clinic – just get a coat-hanger and a pig sty!
Maybe we can make rape safe, legal, and rare too. Or at least legal, so we can dispense with the regret stuff. It’s going to happen anyway…
Rape generally doesn’t kill a human being, Abortion always does.
Abortions are always done by criminals, by definition. The only question is whether the law will recognize them as such and punish them appropriately, or on the contrary will the law continue to protect them from anyone trying to defend their victims.
The whole debate over prohibition only applies to malum prohibitum. Drugs, alcohol, gambling, prostitution, turning right at a red light, are all malum prohibitum where they are prohibited, and completely legitimate where they are not. Murder, theft, rape, these are malum per se; they are crimes even if the legislature disagrees. It is the legislature’s duty to prohibit all those things that are crimes under natural law.
Or do you think it’s “prohibition” to ban gunning people down in the street? Do you think no laws should exist at all? That girl in Las Vegas who pushed an elderly person off a bus and killed him, should she not have been arrested for it? What about the girl who stole the sign at UNC? Was the cop wrong for arresting her?
Natural Law also informs people’s relationship to government. When Governments overreach people find a way around it.
Black Markets are a sign that Government has violated Natural Law.
You might want to consult with the USSR on that. If you can find it.
Could you please stop using that term ‘Natural Law’ until you go and read some Cicero and get a fucking clue?
There exists a black market in murder and leg-breaking for hire. Hit men and goons exist, and make a living. This does not mean the government has somehow violated natural law by prohibiting these activities.
Abortion has always been about two things, power and money.
At the time of Roe v Wade, the argument was that women, who wished to kill their unborn child could not do so legally and, therefor placed their owns lives at risk in order to criminally abort their child. In any sane society, this would have been laughed out of court. So, the pro-abortion forces added the argument that a fetus was not a human being, merely a lump of tissue within the human body, until it could survive on its own. However, neither of these were the true reasons for legalizing abortion.
The real reason was power. It was all geared to giving a female the power to get rid of a child, for nothing more than the sake of convenience, without having to go through the stigma and emotional trauma of carrying, birthing and giving the child up for adoption. It was to relieve a woman of the responsibility for becoming pregnant.
Now, we have a second reason for abortion, money. The abortion industry is a very lucrative one. Not only does it derive a huge amount of revenue from patients and their insurance companies, but it receives huge sums of money from federal and state governments.
It might have continued on, except for the overreach of feminist activists. Over the years, these activists have undermined the argument that the fetus is not a human being, but merely a mass of cells within the female body. We now have a majority of states in this country which recognize the fetus as being a human being at any stage of development. They have even passed specific laws making it the crime of homicide for a third party to use to which results in the abortion of the development of the fetus, without the consent of the mother, at any stage of development. Now, one can not have it both ways. Either the fetus is simply a mass of cells, like any other mass of cells in the female body, or it is a member of homo sapiens and therefor a human being. Now, these people are advocating for allowing a child to die after it has been delivered. Under that logic, it would be permissible for a mother to simply allow her child to die by refusing to feed it or otherwise care for it, at any age.
The concept of abortion being legal is simply irrational. And, judicially, the legal justification for allowing abortion has always been built on legal quicksand. Now, with the recognition of a fetus being a human being from conception on, terminating the life of the fetus when it is not a danger to anyone, without due process, is a violation of several Constitutional amendments.
It is about time the SCOTUS revisited Roe v Wade.
Women do want it both ways. The fetus is both a clump of cells and a baby, whichever is most convenient or avoids the most responsibility.
Abortion is also about indulgence, irresponsibility and inequality. A man’s right to control his reproduction ends at unprotected intercourse. It is of course argued that the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy are more serious for the woman. True enough but nature took that into account when it allotted sex drive. Females should recognize that males are like batteries. We are ever ready. If it is not safe today, put it off til tomorrow. He will come. There is no need to put yourself through the trauma of terminating an innocent human life.
Pregnancy Visual Timeline
Evolution of human life in pictures. Around the 5th to 6th week, we bear a striking resemblance to E.T. Not cute, but a creature that only a mother and father could love. And there’s a heart beat, the blood is pumped, and development of a coherent nervous system and brain, the presumptive beginning of consciousness. The first trimester.
I walked out of my door a few days ago and notice a lump about an inch in diameter on my porch table, not far from where a very determined robin built his nest a few years back up over my kitchen window. Thinking it was some sort of garbage I went closer intending to brush it off, but as I approached I could see that it was moving. Somehow, this tiny new born robin had fallen out of his nest. He was tiny, his skin almost transparent. You could see him breath and see his heartbeat. It was cold that day and he had only a few hairs for feathers. Naked and cold, that tiny bird was clearly alive. And yes, he looked not much different than ET.
I know they say that the mothers will never accept a baby that has been touched by humans but the only way to return him was to cup him in my hands while I climbed up to the nest to put him back. He’s still there. Mom is still sitting on her nest. Dad will teach him to fly in a couple of months. I can’t wait to see, just like a did last year’s fledglings.
While I wouldn’t conflate human and other lifeforms, I do make an effort at rational conservation, whether it is a bird or even a plant. Although, it is clearly easier to connect with the former than the latter. Do what you can, when you can, within reason.
I find something beautiful and almost holy in a tiny life, whether it is a baby bird, a newborn kitten or a precious child.
ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
Maybe. Or it is an integrated process.
You do know Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogney was a retouched (photoshopped before computers) hoax including suggesting ridges that were neitehr gills nor slits were “gill slits”?
“Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogney” was around far longer than photoshoping and is taught as part of embryology. Go back further and a morula is common to everything.
No, it was not around earlier than retouching. The original drawings purporting to depict it were forgeries. Yes, it’s taught as part of embryology; that doesn’t make it true.
I will simply ask: If California is free to ignore federal immigration law, why can’t Alabama completely ignore Roe v. Wade?
Because Federal immigration law doesn’t and can’t impose any duties on California. California doesn’t violate it, it simply exercises its constitutional right not to help the feds enforce it. Roe v Wade says state laws banning abortion are unconstitutional, exactly like state laws banning guns or newspapers.
Justice Harry Blackmun was on evil piece of work.
Maybe, I don’t know enough about him to say for sure. But he didn’t make up a Supreme Court majority on his own.
At the very least, Blackmun kicked the can. It’s not the first time this has happened. Abortion rites are a wicked solution, to an albeit hard problem.
Two things.
First, California can not enforce any immigration laws, per the Arizona v U.S. It can choose whether it wishes to assist federal law enforcement agencies in the enforcement of such laws and to what extent. What it can not do is to actively impede the federal government in the enforcement of those laws. This [drum roll] obstruction of justice. At the moment, many jurisdictions in California are actively impeding the enforcement of immigration laws.
Second, there is no RIGHT to abort a fetus anywhere in the US Constitution. A court can render any decision that it likes, but it has to base that decision upon existing statutory law, case law or a controlling document, such as the Constitution. What the Court did in Roe, was to use the “right to privacy” argument. However, it was also tempered with the “decision” that a fetus was not a human being until it reached a point of viability, which, at that time, was set at 25-28 weeks of development. And, the Court has since punted further definition of the terms in Roe to the states. And, this is where it gets interesting.
A majority of the states have legislated that a fetus is a homo sapiens [a human being], at any stage of development. Many of them have also made it a criminal offense of homicide to terminate the development of the fetus, while in the mother’s womb, except with the permission of the mother. This undermines the “viability” requirement, in Roe, in two ways. The first is that people are being convicted and sentenced to stiff periods of incarceration for damaging a mass of cells, the destruction of which causes no real harm, and certainly no lasting harm, to the woman, in whose body they reside. The second problem is that, if a fetus is considered a human being, under statute, and we have a body of laws, both statutory and common, which make illegal to terminate the life [development] of a human being, unless that human being is a demonstrable danger to the life of another or has been summarily convicted of a heinous criminal act, then terminating the development of a fetus by anyone, unless it meets the above criteria, would be a criminal act. The state has no right to strip a human being of basic human rights, guaranteed under the US Constitution, because the violation of those rights is committed or authorized by the human being’s mother. By that logic, a mother could kill, or authorize the killing of, any of her minor children.
A real can of legal worms now exists. It will be interesting to watch this all unfold.
Leslie Eastman – you made an excellent point.
There was not one single news story about Democrats thirst for baby blood here in the UK BUT the airwaves have been thick with reports about the demise of women in [checks notes] CONSERVATIVE AMERIKKKA!!
Yes, it’s exactly like The Handmaiden’s Tale here, that’s why you never hear any American women criticize our government or our culture, because we put them in jail when they do.
“As Mary blogged, by design, the law is meant to provoke a legal challenge….”
It was also meant to blow up the Internet, and it succeeded.
Both sides are guilty of getting weirder and weirder.
I don’t believe that Americans are getting “more” or “less” pro-life. I think the big middle stays out of the discussion as much as possible, until one side or the other goes too far. Then the middle pulls them back in.
What is ‘too far’ if you believe abortion is the taking of an innocent life? Tell us…
I’m all for extended abortion……….for democrat politicians.
We can keep them comfortable while we discuss if we really want them with their disabilities.
It’s the 21st Century. We have awesome technology. Isn’t it time to find a better birth control method than hacking up a baby with a knife and scissors and dumping it in the trash?
I’ll tell you why we have not done so. Because Planned Parenthood is VERY, VERY profitable. It’s all about the Benjamins.
Better birth control? Seriously, how many choices are there and how many fail or are not even used? I think Alysa Milano has pointed the way and I agree with her so much I have decided not to even consider having sex with her until this issue is resolved.
lol. That was funny. Yes, better birth control. The very fact that there are so many abortions means we need better birth control. We have the technology.
There are millions of possible ideas. One might be to offer $5,000 to people over the age of ? who agree to utilize pregnancy preventing technology. Don’t get caught up in this idea, it’s not meant to be the solution. I’m just making the point that there are better ideas out there than invading a woman’s womb with a metaphorical coat-hanger and hacking around in there.
What’s changed since the 1st Century? Not much.
None of the technological ideas will be utilized because Planned Parenthood makes billions, much of which is donated to political causes.
The more I think about this, the more it makes me angry. For 30 years, the only question we have been allowed to muse over has been: Should we or should we not allow sanitary coat-hangers to kill unwanted children?
Okay, in fairness, there is the morning after pill, so that has changed. But other than that – no advance.
Don’t fall for it. Next time someone boxes you into this ridiculous discussion of whether or not we should allow putting live babies in blenders, rebel and ask why there is not another option available in the year 2019.
Kimberlee Kaye: Democrats Upped the Abortion Ante When They Defended Murdering a Baby Born Alive
Uh, no. The question concerned abortion of a baby near birth when that baby has a terminal condition. The doctor explained that an abortion would not be performed, but that the baby would be delivered. At that point, the parents and doctors could discuss further treatment, including possible end-of-life care.
And your point is what, Zachriels? That babies who are actually born should be “aborted”? Killing a baby is infanticide. And you note this when you refer to the “baby” rather than the “clump of cells” or whatever the preferred term is these days for “human being.”
Kemberlee has this exactly right, and you do nothing but emphasize her point.
Fuzzy Slippers: And your point is what, Zachriels?
That Kimberlee Kaye misrepresented the doctor’s comments, which concerned end-of-life care for a baby with a terminal condition. The doctor’s comments had nothing to do with “killing a baby”.
The Governor was anything but clear, in his statement concerning care and treatment of a baby born with a disability. Perhaps he was speaking of a stillborn child. But, it sounds as though he was speaking of a viable child, born with almost any kind of significant disability. And, he spoke of the mother and doctor “deciding” what to do regarding the baby’s future care. As this was in relation to a third trimester/point of birth bill, it is fair to assume that allowing the child to die, by withholding food and water, or actively ending the child’s life were viable options.
The big problem with these late term abortion bills is that they ignore the viability portion of Roe v Wade.
Mac45: But, it sounds as though he was speaking of a viable child, born with almost any kind of significant disability.
That is incorrect.
Mac45: And, he spoke of the mother and doctor “deciding” what to do regarding the baby’s future care.
In a case of a baby born with a terminal condition, many families will decide to allow a natural death, holding their child as it passes, rather than using extraordinary care which may serve only to prolong the baby’s suffering.
Read this again:
“Northam, a pediatric neurosurgeon: There may be a fetus that’s nonviable. So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
This is a Very confusing statement. What constitutes a NONVIABLE infant? Then there is the part about making the infant comfortable. This suggests that the child would be alive, not dead. If the infant is not breathing, stillborn, then does not resuscitating it render it viable, at least in the short term? Once it has been resuscitated, then the standard procedure would be to obtain a court order to cease life saving or life prolonging treatment, in children, because the patient can not give informed consent.
What the Governor was suggesting is that a mother and a doctor would be allowed to terminate the life of a living infant, after delivery, without judicial review to safeguard the interests of the child. In other words, abortion after birth. The argument that such termination would spare the infant suffering, is extremely subjective.
Mac45: What constitutes a NONVIABLE infant?
From the Latin vita, viable means capable of life. Nonviable means not capable of life. It is a baby with a terminal condition, such as due to a severe developmental defect, one that cannot be adequately treated and is reasonably expected to result in death, and where care often only serves to prolong suffering.
Mac45: This suggests that the child would be alive, not dead.
That’s right. The baby in this particular example is terminal, not dead.
Mac45: Once it has been resuscitated, then the standard procedure would be to obtain a court order to cease life saving or life prolonging treatment, in children, because the patient can not give informed consent.
The parents are the legal guardians and make that decision, just as they would for an older child.
Mac45: What the Governor was suggesting is that a mother and a doctor would be allowed to terminate the life of a living infant, after delivery,
No. He was talking about allowing a natural death rather than prolonging a life that may only serve to prolong suffering.
That is just not true. He was discussing an abortion bill.
Milhouse: That is just not true. He was discussing an abortion bill.
Are you responding to our comment?
If so, yes, it was a discussion of abortion, “in this particular example”, of a woman in labor with a non-viable baby. And the answer was: No. There would be no abortion at the last moment. The baby would be delivered, then appropriate care provided, including consideration of end-of-life care.