When does a person become a person? Abortion advocates seek to deny the personhood of the unborn. But they are finding that even this line can limit what happens every day inside Planned Parenthood clinics.
Pro-life journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, best known for exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of aborted baby body parts, are facing felony charges in the state of California. In a preliminary hearing, prosecution representing the state argued that killing a fetus born alive is not infanticide.
What’s most confusing is that the term fetus is medically defined as a developing human between the ages of two months after conception until birth. In order for the prosecutors’ argument to work, they must either redefine birth as an occurrence that only takes place when the parents want the child; or they must redefine fetus to classify not just an unborn child, but a child who is unwanted by the birth parents. By definition, a "fetus born alive" is a newborn baby, it is no longer a fetus.
But if the State's argument prevails, infanticide becomes legal.
In February of this year, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, made a similar argument. In a radio interview about late term abortion legislation, the Democratic Governor explained that a child born alive after a botched abortion would only be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and family desired. “A discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother,” he explained.
Northam’s staff clarified that he wasn’t promoting infanticide, rather explaining what would happen in the, “tragic and extremely rare case in which a woman with a nonviable pregnancy or severe fetal abnormalities went into labor.”
But even this clarification further exposes the desire of abortion advocates to only apply personhood to a baby who is wanted by the mother. If, as Northam’s staff clarified, a woman goes into labor during an abortion or if the baby survives the abortion and is delivered, it seems that the baby living outside the womb would, medically, no longer be a fetus. It’s disturbing at best, confusing at worst, to consider that a doctor and a mother would have a conversation about what to do with a living baby just because it wasn’t wanted.
Defining and redefining terms has long been a tactic of abortion advocates. As those committed to Pro Abundant Life principles, we must continue to fight against these subtle shifts in semantics and advocate for the truth that both the Bible and medical science upholds—life begins at conception.
What do you think? Do you believe the unborn child is a person and that infanticide has no place in our country? If so, please add your name to the pledge below.
