France's Post-Birth Abortions
Time has a horrifying story out about a rash of infanticide that has cropped up in France as a result of something that psychiatrists are calling "pregnancy denial." In the latest case, six tiny bodies were unearthed by authorities in the garden of Dominique Cottrez, and two other bodies were found in the garden of Ms. Cottrez's parents.
Experts explained [this case] as resulting from pregnancy denial, an often misunderstood and minimized condition. According to Michel Delcroix, a former gynecologist...pregnancy denial is a quasi-schizophrenic condition in which women either don't realize or cannot accept that they are with child — not even enough to have an abortion. Whether these women are afflicted with the condition before they deliver or as they're suddenly giving birth, Delcroix explains, the psychological denial is so strong that they refuse to believe they're pregnant even when the reality confronts them.
Some experts in the medical community argue that women who kill their babies as a result of pregnancy denial should not be subject to the criminal justice system, but should instead be treated for a mental condition. Yet, in order to treat pregnancy denial, doctors must understand its cause.
[I]n some cases, it can...be a matter of women simply failing to see themselves as mothers. "Some women never manage to update their self-identity during pregnancy, [while others] want to become pregnant without wanting to procreate," psychiatrist Pierre Lamothe told Le Parisien on Thursday. "When the child arrives, it doesn't really exist for them. They don't give it life, in psychological terms. If they saw it as a [real] baby, they wouldn't kill it."
This rationale, the "they don't see it as a human being, or else they wouldn't kill it" argument, seems an awful lot like what we hear from "pro-choice" advocates. The fetus is not viewed as a human, but rather as a mass of tissue, and its inhumanness somehow makes doing away with it morally acceptable to some. Yet, for many of us who describe ourselves as pro-life, we have a hard time seeing a moral distinction between aborting a life at three months post-conception and nine months post-conception. On the one hand, why should one woman have to face a criminal sentence or even medical treatment simply for aborting her child six months later than another who did so with the full protection of the law? On the other hand, why shouldn't these women who commit infanticide be hit by the full force of the law? After all, denying the personhood of another individual, has been the essence of murder since the beginning of time.
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Jul '10
Re: France's Post-Birth Abortions
We are now living in a day and age where everything is some kind of mental illness.
I was reading the other day about 'Doomsday Personality.' That is a preson who gets into a tough spot and suddenly has only one thought in mind, "How many of those (Insert Explitave Here) can I take with me?"
Got that?
Audie Murphy was mentally deranged with Doomsday Personality when he became the Highest Decorated War Hero during WWII.
So, no, this doesn't surprise me. When consequences are removed, the action becomes more pallatable. So now we have post vaginal abortions that are due to a mental disorder, and soon they will be mainstream.
just a matter of time.
Wonderful, huh?
Edited on Jul 31, 2010 at 7:28pmJul '10
Re: France's Post-Birth Abortions
NOTE: The comments need an EDIT function
Jun '10
Re: France's Post-Birth Abortions
"Audie Murphy was mentally deranged with Doomsday Personality when he became the Highest Decorated War Hero during WWII."
Please cite a source.
May '10
Re: France's Post-Birth Abortions
I wonder how much of the world still practices infanticide in its most obvious form (killing fully grown, born babies).
In my experience, most people who support abortions in more than truly exceptional circumstances consider the defining trait of humanity and personhood to be free will / cognition. They fail to realize that such a view supports the killing of toddlers, because a year-old child has no more self-awareness and logic than an adult chimpanzee.
I believe that one's identity is not bound to any single aspect. It ends differently than it begins... growing, shifting, and even receding. It begins with a biological schematic, DNA, and personal bonds (the son/daughter of...). It grows to include one's place of origins, one's people, one's likes and dislikes, one's choices, one's labors, one's experiences, etc. None of these are peripheral to who we really are. And, if one's mind should fade or be broken, so much remains to make that person unique and uniquely loved.
Our Creator's love is the true basis of our value, as human beings and as individual persons. Even a broken thing may be loved by its owner.
Jul '10
Re: France's Post-Birth Abortions
For anyone who is interested in Sanctity of Life issues and envisioning a reduction in the amount of abortions performed , see what one group is doing, succesfully;
http://www.heartlink.org/oupdirectors.cfm
Whatever degree of "pregnancy denial" an expectant mother may be experiencing could possibly be eliminated by a few good ultrasounds. Or ,at least, Doctors could determine if a severe psychological problem does exist.
Two questions I have;
1) What exactly is a quasi-schizophrenic condition as opposed to real schizophrenia?
2) For the women out there; Would you rather be referred to as a 'pregnant woman' or 'expectant mother' ?
Re: France's Post-Birth Abortions
Beautifully stated, Aaron. Our value is not derived from whether or not we are wanted or loved by other people. To a large segment of the population, there's something horribly tragic about an infant being abducted or murdered, while aborting a baby in the womb seems perfectly acceptable. The only difference I can discern is that the one is wanted and the other is not.
Jul '10
Re: France's Post-Birth Abortions
UK and Canadian criminal codes provide (or used to in my day) a separate section for a mother who kills her newborn. The theory being that while she is still criminally liable, the code recognizes that her mental state may have been altered by the pregnancy. The killing is thus treated differently from first degree murder (with malice aforethought) or manslaughter and the punishment is less severe. That makes sense to me. Now, however, when we must pretend that women, even when pregnant, are the clones of men, hormonal distinctions are not pc. What's also not pc, of course, is treating deviant behaviour for what it is.
Re: France's Post-Birth Abortions
"It doesn't really exist for them." Here we are back at Hamlet again, and we see how that turned out. You cannot exist or not exist for me. You simply exist or you don't. And since I am talking to you, you do. Even a dead baby, even a murdered one, exists. Even six million murdered people, in huge piles or lumped into mass graves, exist.
Psychology should be ashamed of itself. "They refuse to believe they're pregnant?" "If they saw it as a real baby they wouldn't kill it?" As if the ontological status of the baby is, in some irreducible way, actually unknowable! As if the most basic truth -- of life -- cannot even come to the defense of human beings after they are born. These apparently idiotic declarations are all too knowing. Psychology has a lot to answer for. "They refuse to admit they are pregnant"-- now that is a diagnosis.