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A legal conundrum for you
In this story, police say a Kathryn McCoy, 19, delivered her term or near-term baby into a toilet.
In this story, a Florida abortionist testifies that women ”nearly always” aborted their term or near-term babies into toilets at his clinic. (See testimony of Dr. Whitney, bottom third of story.)
In the abortion debate, no one seriously argues anymore that a baby isn’t a baby. The issue with abortion is “reproductive choice” — that is, whether the woman wants the baby. Clearly Kathryn McCoy didn’t want her baby. Why is her action a crime while the actions of Dr. Whitney and his patients were not?
HT: David L
Topic: Issues, WorldMagBlog
Keywords: abortion
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back to top27 Comments to “A legal conundrum for you”
Here’s another report, this from a TV station, titled “Coroner: Baby found at college was born alive.”
http://www.wpsdtv.com/mostpopular/story.aspx?content_id=5aa042ad-d3f7-473a-8fa3-172254aabb07
I had no idea that “concealing the birth of a child” was a criminal offense.
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This breaks my heart.
In my state, Texas, we enacted a law that was long overdue.
A new mom can leave her newborn at a firestation or at a hospital with “no questions asked” (Not sure how this has worked in reality. CCTV’s are everywhere and those do seem to deter these baby “abandonmt” instances)
Abortion is a heinous, blood-stained and grievous evil on our nation. Individuals are judged in the next life but nation’s and societies are judged in this world, not the hereafter. That tells me that His judgmt will come on the USA if it hasnt already been imposed on us.
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Is it morally permissible to “terminate one’s pregnancy” as long as the baby is attached to the mother and therefore “her body, her choice”? Even after it’s delivered but before the cord is cut?
Or is the baby essentially the same five minutes before it’s born (when it’s legal to kill it) as it is five minutes after it’s born (when killing it gets you charged with murder)?
If not, where is the line to be drawn? Is the fetus at 3 months substantially different that it is at 3 months plus one day?
Moral lepers like Peter Singer think that the characteristics of personhood aren’t acquired by the fetus until it’s a baby of 3 months or so. This is the logic by which he justifies infanticide, and I’ve seen similar opinions expressed by liberals on this blog. Of course, in the 19th century, the Supreme Court didn’t think blacks possessed the characteristics of personhood, either. But who’s to say what’s really right in this topsy-turvy world, right?
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That one of these situations is a crime while the other is not just makes no reasonable sense whatsoever, no matter what you believe about abortion.
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I recall a few years back the incident of the “prom mom” who delivered in a high school latrine.
And then there was the cute collegiate couple who evidently murdered their newborn after the mom delivered in a motel not far from their university. They were never punished beyond a house arrest type arrangemt.
And the young British who got blamed for the death of the Boston ophthalmologists’ little son. (She was freed by a US judge and went back to UK)
You just get numbed to it all.
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We have the same “drop off the unwanted baby” law here in California, but not as many are “abandoned” as you might think. Maybe it’s shame, fear, I don’t know, but it is too bad many women don’t know there are people and services willing to help them for free.
So many of these women could benefit from a simple listening ear. But when you make an immature decision and end up unexpectedly pregnant, it’s probably hard to make a mature decision about how to deal with the unwanted pregnancy.
Many girls pretend it didn’t happen, then end up like Kathryn. Many women dither too long and end up in disgusting late-term abortion situations. It grieves me that they couldn’t find, or didn’t look for, someone who could help them–like their local crisis pregnancy center.
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I’d like to hear some of the progressives weigh in on this one. Do you agree the first is a crime and the second is not? What’s the difference?
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What a nasty roommate, McCoy’s golf team suspected a pregnancy. The roommate brought a garbage bag to McCoy after she was in the bathroom for an hour. Then the roommate went to the trash room, found the garbage bag, and called police.
The reason McCoy is a criminal is that she is a dumb college kid who didn’t protect her privacy when it mattered, and was careless. Having not trusted her roommate before, she asked the roommate for a garbage bag. Women who wish to commit infanticide need to understand evidence and criminal procedure. Infanticide is an offense against public sensibility, and the birth police don’t come unless they’re called.
As the Texas court of criminal appeals has ruled countless times, criminal guilt is a procedural phenomenon which has nothing to do with factual guilt or innocence. Abortion isn’t a crime because many good, reasonable people have realized that it isn’t bad. Infanticide is a crime because society doesn’t want to know about it.
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Nobody out there but crickets, JJF.
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Ah, the Peter Singer representative comes out of his mousehole.
How long will it take this backward society of ours to realize that newborns are just blobs of cellular goo and that flushing them down the toilet is a woman’s right?
Scroop, you’re old enough to realize that what’s moral and what’s legal don’t always correspond. Pointing out that abortion is legal but infanticde isn’t is just repeating the question. Care to try again?
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Scroop,
So you believe that there is nothing morally wrong with infanticide? Is there something morally wrong with murder? What’s the difference?
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And why don’t people want to know about it, if it’s not bad?
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Infanticide is sometimes good, provided it’s kept secret, but blanket laws against infanticide serve the practical and highly moral purpose of protecting society’s bond with newborns — a bond which thanks to a trick of evolution is a final “stage” of gestation in which society shapes a brain that is too large to fit through the birth canal. The important thing is the bond, not a particular newborn (but we shouldn’t say that too loudly).
McCoy will be prosecuted for murder. She is guilty of offending public sensibilities, so I agree with her prosecution even though I don’t think she murdered a person. As soon as the fetus plopped in the toilet bowl, it entered the public sphere, and when McCoy talked to her roommate and to the police she just as good as registered the infant as a live birth. McCoy didn’t commit murder, in my opinion, but she did something wrong which people passionately want to call murder, and that passion is worth respecting, even if it is a bit loopy.
I’ve never read or listened to Peter Singer. Do I need to?
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JJF – In my youth, I came upon a bloody bird on the shoulder of a road. It was chirping and beating a wing, but was obviously too injured to survive. I picked up a stick and struck it. The bird jumped a foot or so off the ground and kept chirping. I hit it again, horrified at myself, at the tenacity of life, and at the knowledge that passing motorists could see and be shocked and upset. No circumstances in my life are likely to present me with a choice about infanticide. But if they did, I’d feel morally justified in stopping great suffering, if I could do so without offending public knowledge.
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And killing a baby stops great suffering how exactly?
And what’s the point of stopping great suffering?
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Scroop Moth (14): In my youth, I came upon a bloody bird on the shoulder of a road. It was chirping and beating a wing, but was obviously too injured to survive … (etc.)
Frank: A touching story, to be sure. But Kathryn McCoy did not “come upon” a bloody animal that was too injured to survive.
She conceived a human being by an act of her own volition.
Scroop Moth (14): No circumstances in my life are likely to present me with a choice about infanticide. But if they did, I’d feel morally justified in stopping great suffering, if I could do so without offending public knowledge.
Frank: Are you suggesting that maybe Kathryn McCoy killed her child out of concern for its great suffering?
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Addendum: She conceived, by an act of her own volition, a human being that was in all likelihood healthy enough to survive — if only she wanted it to.
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Well it seems that infanticide, and not just abortion, is justified in the minds of some of our atheists….
What have I said before? Logically, there’s no foundation for morality in an atheistic world view. Morality is relative. Whatever you can get away with is ok.
At least you’re an honest atheist, Scroop.
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No man is honest, make it man. I’m not an atheist. God probably is, but I’m not.
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I can see it now…
By day, John Doe is a vigilant anesthesiologist, aleviating the sufferings of the torrent of patients that run through Johnson Community Hospital.
But by night, he is “The Painkiller”, a vigilante who stops the pain of all people he comes in contact with by taking them out of existence.
How did John Doe become the painkiller? One night after being stood up by one date too many, he realized that life is full of pain, heartache, and suffering. The birthing process, homework, dentist visits, blind dates, headaches, malnutrition… it was too much. He wished there was something he could do to stop his own pain, and that of others. And then it came to him… the dead feel no pain. And he became The Painkiller.
Is he a hero? Is he a villian? Does it even matter, if killing is merely anti-social and not actually evil?
See The Painiller(TM) in theaters averwhere Summer 2008.
Ok, ok. It’s a little campy. And by little, I mean that even Adam West might turn it down. But it would make a great summer blockbuster, no?
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You’re not an atheist?
What then? With a comment like that last one, I don’t know what else you might be then.
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Confused?
Have a good weekend y’all.
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Infanticide has historically been treated as a separate crime from homicide; at least in the English common law. And there is good reason for this; the circumstances are different.
Again historically a human was not treated with similar despite age and development differences. Babies were frequently though to be less than human. And psychologically and physically they are at the very least quite different. Due to today’s science, we could argue on a materialistic basis an opposite conclusion but the debate is still there.
The emergence from the birth canal cannot on its own confer personhood and humaness whether legally nor morally. One could take the conception route or the more ambigous route of a graduated entry into the ranks of humanity.
Regardless in this case, she is guility but when serve very little time. The abortionist should clean up his act as the later the abortion the riskier the procedure. I would like to see his liability inusurance after the latest admission.
To avoid both, we need less stupid and naive people in America and I’m not sure this will happen anytime soon.
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In the strict legal sense, a doctor can perform abortions on “fetuses”, but a woman cannot kill her preborn “baby”. In the moral sense, both are the premeditated taking of an innocent human life which is the definition of murder.
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“And psychologically and physically they are at the very least quite different.”
Yet they look very much like we did when we were that age.
Obfuscate much?
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To avoid both, we need less stupid and naive people in America and I’m not sure this will happen anytime soon.
Holding my breath until this happens. Turning blue. Passing o—
Thud
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