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Evil in Our Midst
So today, the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony about the “Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act,” a piece of legislation Speaker Pelosi refuses to allow the House to vote on. Killing a child born in the course of an abortion is illegal; however, neglecting such a child until it dies remains legal. The testimony coming out of this committee is so sickening it had me seeing red:
But OBGYN Kathi Aultman, a former medical director at a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, testified that nurse Julie Wilkinson — who assisted an abortionist with late-term abortions — told her “that the vast majority of abortions that they performed were done for convenience, not for fetal anomalies or maternal health problems.” …
“I was a registered nurse at Christ Hospital in Illinois, when I learned it committed abortions into the second and third trimesters. The procedure, called induced labor abortion, sometimes resulted in babies being aborted alive,” she said. “In the event a baby was aborted alive, he or she received no medical assessments or care but was only given what my hospital called ‘comfort care’ – made comfortable, as Governor Northam indicated.”
“One night, a nursing co-worker was transporting a baby who had been aborted because he had Down syndrome to our soiled utility room to die – because that’s where survivors were taken. I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone, so I rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed about 1/2 pound, and was about the size of my hand,” Stanek testified. “He was too weak to move very much, expending all his energy attempting to breathe. Toward the end he was so quiet I couldn’t tell if he was still alive unless I held him up to the light to see if his heart was still beating through his chest wall.”
“After he was pronounced dead, I folded his little arms across his chest, wrapped him in a tiny shroud, and carried him to the hospital morgue where we took all our dead patients,” she added. “Christ Hospital readily admitted babies there survived abortions. A spokesman told the Chicago Sun-Times (article submitted with testimony) ‘between 10 percent and 20 percent’ of aborted babies ‘survive for short periods.'”
Stanek testified that aborted babies would often live for an hour or two after their birth. One survived for as long as eight hours. They perished because they did not receive the care that could have saved their lives.
The nurse also recalled Christ Hospital’s “comfort room,” unveiled in December 2000. Rather than taking live aborted babies (an oxymoron term to avoid the truth of infanticide) to the soiled utility room to die, the nurses would take the babies to the comfort room.
“This was a small, nicely decorated room complete with a First Foto machine in case parents wanted pictures of their aborted babies, baptismal supplies if parents wanted their aborted babies baptized, and a foot printer and baby bracelets if parents wanted keepsakes of their aborted babies. There was also a wooden rocker to rock these babies to death,” Stanek testified. She submitted photos of the comfort room with her testimony.
The enormity of the evil here is physically sickening.
Let’s start with the horror of “Christ Hospital” (an appalling blasphemy if ever there was one) even performing abortions. By performing abortions, they seem to have greatly misunderstood “suffer the little ones to come unto me.” I can only hope that the “comfort room” was also for families with spontaneous abortions and miscarriages that resulted in infants for whom invasive neonatal care was not an option — otherwise, I cannot fathom the level of narcissistic heresy that would prompt someone to not feel guilty about either their fornication or their hiring of a murderer to kill their child, but then when the murderer botched the job, insist on a baptism where they claim to renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways on behalf of their murder victim! Photos and footprints and keepsakes? Keeping trophies of one’s kills is normally considered psychopathic, but apparently “Christ Hospital” is in the business of catering to the morally diseased.
Yes, I know good pro-lifers aren’t supposed to think that women who contract to kill their children are morally diseased because … well, I still haven’t figured it out exactly. It appears to be a combination of “they’re just silly little things who can’t be expected to take responsibility for their sex drives” and “they don’t realize that fetuses are people.” You know, just like how plantation owners didn’t think that slaves were people or the Nazis didn’t think Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals were people, and so we excuse their murders. And as noted, these are not women who are facing medical complications from the pregnancy or even the bearing children with the kind of severe genetic abnormalities that are brought up in these discussions as excuses to cull the untermensch — these are abortions of healthy babies ordered by healthy women.
Also on the topic of morally diseased, what about the doctors and nurses? How can anyone perform one of these operations, hold the living, breathing baby in one’s hands, and just leave it in a room to die of neglect? Sure, congratulations to Nurse Stanek for discovering morality, but I can’t fathom how she could live with being a paid accessory to murder for years.
And finally, on a tangent, I really wish the Catholic Church would start ordaining men instead of wittering old ladies in drag. At least, that’s my assumption as for why a woman who works to ensure murdering children by neglect will continue to be legal in this country has not been anathematized.
Published in Healthcare
The devil promises to alleviate temporal suffering — at the price of depriving you of heaven.
God bless your friends. They’re on their way to sainthood.
I’ll probably have something more coherent and balanced and reasoned to say later, but for now -would someone remind me why Jayhawking is not the proper response?
Well, one jayhawk named Scott Roeder did it to George Tiller, murdering the Wichita abortionist in the foyer of his own ELCA church. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
(Also, my go to example for why churches shouldn’t prohibit firearms. If someone wants to kill you, the fact that it’s a church isn’t going to stop them.)
Ross Douthat argued that the reason Roeder was wrong to shoot Tiller is that, so long as there exists the possibility of lawful and peaceful abolition of abortion, Roeder’s act was a form of insurrection, and therefore morally wrong.
Believe it or not, Donald Trump is probably the best thing that ever happened to the “no, we should not commit insurrection” cause, as it is his Supreme Court appointments that make the possibility of lawful and peaceful abolition not some type of twisted joke. Even then, I still suspect that everyone save Thomas is perfectly happy to be the sixth vote to overturn Roe.
But as you and Percival point out, at this point quite likely a majority of the country is partly complicit in this. It’s as bad, and quite possibly worse, than slavery. And at that point pretty much the only argument against insurrection is that we’d lose. Funny, I don’t expect to hear any paeans to courage on this topic.
(Sorry, I shouldn’t be this angry this early in the day.)
Historically, when abortions were illegal, the reason that women who had abortions were not charged while the abortionists were charged is because courts treated the woman as a second victim in the crime. But also because to protect themselves, abortionists would seek to have the women prosecuted as well. And if they could get the woman considered an accomplice, she could not testify against the abortionist and the case would be thrown out of court.
Hi! We are enjoying the little one! :- )
Frankly, it makes me want to reenact the Red Wedding. I truly understand now H.L. Mencken’s line that “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
@GrannyDude – thank you for a very thoughtful and well-written comment. A great contribution to an already worthy discussion.
Sabr,
Just for argument’s sake, as every known definition of the beginning of life, legal, religious, or ethical, accepts a delivered breathing baby as a human life then someone could justify the use of deadly force to directly defend the baby against someone bent on the baby’s murder.
You are expressing an angry frustration that has reached a climax. For the last 46 years since Roe, we have lived in this environment of subtle corruption of the most fundamental moral value that of a human life. During all that time many hiding behind the excuse that a delivered living breathing baby is their definition of human life, have pushed and pushed their valueless amoral mentality. Now their complete hypocrisy has been revealed. Convenience allows the goal post to be moved even in this ultimate question. Some of the grotesque so-called medical ethicists are preparing the way. They have already claimed that it would be OK to end the life of a child up until the age of 18 months.
Frankly, Sabr, if you are going to shoot somebody I’d prefer you shoot the bastard medical ethicist. You aren’t the only one who has reached the end of their patience. Maybe just maybe a legal posse is forming.
Regards,
Jim
Just War Theory, as first formulated by St Augustine, is applicable here. Killing is morally acceptable when it is the only means to defend life from evil.
In self-defense or neighbor defense (mass shootings, for example) cases, it is acceptable to kill an assailant attempting to murder.
God Himself smote many people, and God is love; so killing is not universally evil. Because we lack God’s vision, even good and just men must fear killing unjustly by mistake. But as human beings may be the willing instruments of God’s charity and justice in so many other ways, so it is possible that we may be the instruments of another’s just death.
In war, it is acceptable to kill enemy combatants to defend lives from aggression which would murder, enslave, or (if revolution can ever be justified) turn a society essentially toward evil.
But there is a pivotal caveat to justification of war: there must be a reasonable likelihood of successful defense. Otherwise, killing assailants does not advance justice on earth.
God alone can provide spiritual justice. He alone can bring balance in the wake of murder, rape, and the most severe evils. A life for a life — the death penalty — is not full justice when the first act is malevolent and undeserved, the second retribution. The primary function of human justice is to deter evils on earth, leaving to God the final judgment and ultimate correction.
Killing abortionists is wrong because it does not defend children. Other abortionists would continue the slaughter. In war, killing soldiers might amount to weakening the enemy army to a point of conquest. But the legality of abortion cannot be overcome by killing the aggressors.
Asserted without evidence. At the time of Tiller’s assassination, he was one of only five doctors performing abortions past 25 weeks. As of right now, just two clinics in the country, AbortionClinics.org in Bethesda and Boulder Abortion Clinic, perform abortions that late, and only 18 clinics across the country provide abortions after 20 weeks. Considering many of these clinics only have one or sometimes two docs involved, that’s two dozen people out of roughly 50,000 American OBGYNs. It’s already an incredibly unpopular specialty; how many would really stay in it or replace the ones who fall if assassination was a substantial job hazard?
I’m still in control of myself to not go murder them myself, but unlike a soldier in a war, there really aren’t reserves willing to step into the breach.
Aren’t there some states trying to pass laws to allow non-MDs to perform abortions? I dunno, there are some very determined people when it comes to this issue.
I just finished three days of a Hillsdale CCA on Understanding China. Steven Mosher (author of Bully of Asia) was the closing speaker and he started his talk describing his trip to China sponsored by the Carter administration. He stood in an operating room where eight women at 7, 8, or 9 months gestation were given forcible abortions — by c-section. Can you imagine?
This is the end of such bad, bad (Left-wing) ideas. Pure evil.
Ugh. Any 7-month has a great chance at life with the right care.
Yes. Maine is among them (as of the new Dem governor).
Just to be clear: I’m not saying I would have been right to accede to an abortion in the event of a bad prenatal diagnosis…only that I am fairly sure I could’ve been persuaded to do it if I were told by some authoratative person that it was the right thing to do for my child. At the time (we’re talking the ’80s: no internet!) it might have been difficult to access information about, for example, the possibility of a wrong diagnosis, or of prenatal hospice as an alternative to termination. On the other hand, I was connected to Georgetown University (had my first son there) and it’s possible the hospital would’ve offered some helpful, Catholic perspective back then?
Anyway, the point is that I can understand and sympathize with parents who get talked into these things. “He wouldn’t be able to breathe, and would only live for twenty minutes” sounds horrible, especially if they aren’t particularly honest about the alternative Mom and Dad would need to compare it with. “We’ll give him a heart attack that may take up to two hours to kill him” for example.
Not to mention “yes, we have to assume that he can feel pain.”
And the baby’s siblings learned how precious her little life was, even if it was cut short.
The urge for infanticide is built into our nature. Humans have been killing babies for all of civilization, and I would guess our whole existence. Humans have sex for fun and we get babies we don’t want.
Being pro Life is fundamentally Christian. It stands against base drives, in an unnatural way. God calls us to embrace more than our bodies, and walk with Him. Being pro life is as unnatural as giving grace to an enemy.
We will never be rid of this evil, I am afraid. There will always be people wanting to dispose of babies they don’t want.
Yes, but we don’t have to accept it as normal. We don’t have to allow for the brutalizing, desensitizing effect of abortion on the culture in general and medical culture in particular.
Sure.
I am not calling for that at all.
I know—shouldn’t have made it sound like I’m contradicting you! And I agree: human beings are quite naturally capable of terrible acts. To be Pro-Life is to stand against what is our default mode.
It’s higher order thinking which Andrew Klavan summarizes as, “You don’t get to kill innocents to solve your problems.”