Is It Murder? Depends on Who Does It
Each day in the United States of America doctors kill approximately 2,500 unborn babies. These range in age from just a few days after conception to eight to nine months after conception. Many of the procedures by which these little lives are taken sound more like Holocaust torture methods than medical practices. To justify this mass murder, the claim is made that the “fetus” is not really a person and can be disposed of like so much unwanted biologic tissue.
Our society, however, cannot consistently maintain the idea that fetuses are not human persons. For example, in April, a 38-year-old pregnant woman in the state of Massachusetts intentionally stabbed herself in the abdomen, killing her seven-month-old child (Lavoie, 2009). If she had gone to a clinic, and allowed a doctor to kill the child with forceps, saline solution, or a high-powered vacuum device, the “procedure” would be a routine “medical” occurrence resulting in the legal death of a “fetus.” Since she did the job herself, however, authorities are waiting for the results of an autopsy to determine whether the child could have survived outside the womb. If the child was “viable” outside the womb, then the authorities will be deciding “whether to...charge Chi-Xue with murder in the death of her unborn baby” (Lavoie, 2009). The tragic irony of the situation is that doctors routinely murder children who are viable outside the womb, but authorities never consider charging them with murder. So why would the case be different with Chi-Xue?
Apparently, our society thinks that “sanitizing” murder by calling it abortion, performing it in a hospital or clinic, and allowing “licensed practitioners” to perform the macabre act, justifies the resulting death of the innocent child. Yet when such distractions are absent, and the brutality of a mother stabbing her 7½ month-old unborn child comes before us, it seems clear to the most calloused, pro-choice advocate that a gruesome crime has been committed. How long, fellow citizens, will God allow a nation full of the blood of innocent children to continue? As it was in Israel in the Old Testament under the reign of Manasseh, so it is true today, we have filled the United States with innocent blood, which the Lord will not pardon (2 Kings 24:4).
Lavoie, Denise (2009), “Mom Suspected of Killing Daughter, Stabbing Fetus,” [On-line], URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090417/ap_on_re_us/mother_stabbings.