A (not so) modest proposal?

I had an interesting thought the other day and as I followed this train of thought through, I considered the practice of killing infants. I'm going somewhere with this, I promise. In the bible, there are two major accounts that stand out in my mind, the first, and most well known, is when Herod gathered up all the male children two years old or younger and killed them (found in Matthew 2:16-18). The second is not a reference to actual infanticide. In Ezekiel 16:3 and following, God describes Israel as a baby girl who is left in the open on the day of her birth to die. This is making reference to a well known practice of exposing a child. If for any reason a child did not find favor in the eyes of the father, it would be left outside of the city to die. Other forms of this involved throwing the child off a cliff, drowning, and various other things

Now, I'm sure that to the modern reader, this seems atrocious, hideous and disgusting to leave a baby to die outside a city or even worse to murder a child with your own hands, but it was a fully accepted practice among the Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, Chinese, Japanese... well you get the idea. Infanticide was beyond common, it was as humdrum an affair as buy groceries. They held no self delusions that it was not murder since the child could not support itself, they did not pretend that if they just left it outside it wasn't like they were killing it. They knew they were killing a baby and it was okay because they didn't like it. It was too ugly, it was a girl, it looked scrawny, whatever, they didn't like it, they killed it. But what if I talked about abortion? Would you be able to hold onto that feeling of disgust you just had? Or would you just get mad at me and call me conservative?

I read one author who argued that the reason infanticide was universally illegal in the world today is thanks to Christianity, and he gave some wonderful points that certainly would seem to prove his case, but he sadly fails to grasp the horrible truth that infanticide hasn't stopped, it's simply become refined. We've traded the brutish, uncivilized method of killing babies and adopted a pristine, painless, classy way of doing it. We've stopped killing them when they are outside, and started killing them while they're still on the inside. And sure, we try and justify it, as if it were okay since it could not survive outside the womb, but if we take that stance, why not legalize the murder of children? I mean, have you met a 5 year old who could survive on its own? Psh, I've met 20-year-olds who wouldn't fit that definition of alive!

Modern science has removed the veil of mystery about the development of a fetus and proved how quickly a child it by all accounts alive. Now I must admit something that will shock many people, I am pro-choice. It's true! I believe that a woman has the full right to choose whether or not to engage in activities that may result in a human life being conceived. But after that? After that to forcibly end child's life is murder.

Fun fact! Congress recognizes unborn children who die when the mother is assaulted as alive and therefore the attacker is guilty of homicide (Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-212) signed by President Bush on April 1, 2004) . Further fun fact! The act of assisted suicide got Jack Kevorkian convicted of second degree murder (non premeditated murder). So the question becomes, why wouldn't a "doctor". I'm sorry, I put that in quotes because a real doctor has to do that Hippocratic oath thing where they promise to do no harm, and even if they didn't, the whole point of being a doctor is to make people better. Not... you know, kill babies. So, as I was saying, the question becomes why wouldn't a "abortion clinic guy masquerading as a legitimate doctor" be guilty of second degree murder also? I mean, congress recognizes that a fetus in any stage of development that prematurely ends is in fact a full fledged loss of life and the justice department clearly finds "doctors" who assist their patients into death guilty of second degree murder so... yeah, it doesn't take a genius to put one and one together.

Not that any such anti-baby killing law will ever come into affect mind you. Just like prostitution will never be illegal. These two things go back forever in earth's history. We like killing our children. People find comfort in the knowledge that they can live however they want and not have to worry about those pesky consequences.

Hmm... I'm sure some people who are legitimately pro-choice would find offense at me saying "baby killing". So if you do find offense at that, please re-read the post, but kindly substitute "abortion" anytime you see "baby killing". Those ancient societies didn't kill their children, they simply didn't have all our fancy medicine so they "post-utero aborted" that's all. And hey, just like that, that feeling of disgust is gone right?

I'm gonna wrap things up here with an interesting little fact. The other day I was speaking to a friend of mine and Amy's who I take Chinese with. She's off in another part of the world and I got to wondering what time it was where she was and I came across this little gem.

http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks2.htm

It's a clock that calculates the current number of many things. Of most interest to me, was the death page. It breaks down into category the number of people who have died by a specific cause. Of particular interest is a little footnote at the bottom that says "abortion is not counted in the total number of deaths". And hey, it's a good thing it's not because if it were, the number of deaths would almost double. At the time of this writing, the total number of deaths, as calculated by them and they have a very nice page describing how they get these numbers, is 28,540,000. Total number of abortions? 19,464,000. If abortions were included in the total number of deaths, it would count for 40.5% of all total deaths! We may cry for the atrocieties happening to children in Africa right now, but what about the genocide we're waging against our own unborn right here in America?

A (not so) modest proposal?

Designer Babies

Okay, so while I was watching nightline tonight, they ran this story about a lady who's selling embryo's that come from a union between PH D, handsome men in their 20s and equally smart attractive women. (here's the linkage http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=2895615&page=1 )

That right there is a little disturbing to me, as if, to coin the phrase from nightline, you are trying to build a better baby. What's more disturbing, however, is the fact that people are going way out of their way to do stuff like buy embryos or in vitro fertilization when in the US alone we are killing 1.37 Million babies a year (approx 3,700 a day) via abortions ( http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html ) yet we are only adopting 120,000 children a year (approx 329 a day) that comes out to our adoptions only equaling about 8.9% of our abortions.

But check this statistic out, 7.3 million couples in America suffer from infertility ( http://www.resolve.org/site/PageServer?pagename=fmed_mcff_ffi )! That’s right, a little over 5 times the amount of people having abortions would love to have that child! What about the leftovers? The ones who want a child but would be unable to save the life of a child facing abortion? Well, there’s still another 44.63 million abortions happening around the world every year. Guys, first of all, there should be zero abortions in America. We’re better than all that, we’re supposed to be civilized and know the value of human life. Instead, we prefer the right of a woman to murder the result of a night of illicit sex.

What about rape? I sympathize, I do 100% and more, but should the sins of the father be paid by the sons? Do we kill the children of a mass murder? No! They have just as much right to life as annoy, if you don’t desire the baby then give it up for adoption! There are people who would love to cherish that child!

We should make protection more affordable, give it to teenagers, it’s not encouraging them to have sex, the one’s that are gonna do it are gonna do it with our without it. It will, however, save a life ( 20% of abortions come from teenagers).

This embryo thing? It’s sick. If people are having that much problems finding the money to adopt, then we need to take a serious look at why it costs so much. Think of it, we could save 7.3 MILLION lives. That is with infertile couples alone. My brother and his wife are adopting, some friends of the family have adopted and a third are about to adopt. That’s 3 friends I could think of in 10 seconds, I could name more.

I’d like to encourage everyone to check out my brother’s blog ( http://danielbennett.blogspot.com/index.html ) and talk to annoy considering abortion to consider adoption instead. Even if we got couples to donate the fertilized embryo over aborting it (the difference being natural conception that was going to be murdered verse a “test tube” baby), the child would have a chance at life!

One final note, the lady in the nightline article says “I suggest buying a pair because the first one doesn’t always take”. It’s just one more life, that we helped kill. We created it not caring if it lives or die, we got a second one standing by. If that doesn’t work we’ll try a third. Guys, we should give the ones that are already existing a chance.

I fully plan to adopt a child at some point during my life. And I encourage anyone who is planning abortion to PLEASE reconsider. There are alternatives. 7.3 million people are waiting for your child.

Designer Babies