Recent news accounts have related the story of a young unmarried couple charged with killing their newborn child before putting it into a trash bin. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty, reflecting society's outrage at such acts.

What news accounts fail to point out is that for all their lives, this young couple have been part of a society in which millions of women have killed their children whenever their children would have been an inconvenience to them. This couple simply waited a few minutes too long for the killing of their baby to be acceptable. If they had hired a hit man with a medical degree to kill the child before he left the womb, the young lady would simply have been exercising her precious "right to choose."

In fact, the child could have been virtually born, having only his head remaining within the mother, and killing him would have been acceptable. To criminalize such a "partial birth" abortion would be an infringement on the mother's "reproductive rights." But after the baby had moved a few inches farther, killing him became a heinous crime. Those few inches made the difference between a homicide and the woman's right to choose.

It is amazing what a premium pro-abortionists place on location. Whether or not one has the right to kill a child depends on where the child is located — whether inside the womb or outside it.

Those who wonder how parents could kill their new-born should ponder the social climate in which that young couple's morals and values were formed. A society that has condoned the legalized killing of millions of babies should not be shocked when some develop a callousness toward the lives of infants.

Anti-abortionists have long warned that the killing of children before birth would lead to an acceptance of killing children after birth, and that is virtually what is occurring in partial-birth abortions. It is a short step from devaluating the lives of babies in the womb to devaluating the lives of babies who have just left the womb. Those who have learned to accept the practice of killing the unborn for the mother's convenience will have fewer qualms about killing their newborn for the mother's convenience; for there is no logical difference between killing a child in one location and killing him after he has moved to a different location.

Guardian of Truth XLI: 2 p. 20
January 16, 1997