Cornell Law Professor Sherry Colb writing for FindLaw Magazine writes a ghastly piece on abortion.
She’s writing about the case where a woman attempted to procure a late term abortion but the abortionist wasn’t on time and the baby was born alive gasping for breath, only to be thrown into a plastic bag and killed.
Now, Colb doesn’t exactly excuse the abortionist’s actions but examines them and seeks to codify them. But the language used is, I’m sure, unintentionally ghastly and cold. Reading her column sent chills up my spine.
Here’s Colb’s writing on the issue:
One might argue, as some pro-life advocates have, that there is no meaningful difference between what Gonzalez did and what an abortion provider does, because in both cases, a fetus is killed. This argument, however, ignores one of the main premises of the right to abortion – the bodily-integrity interest of the pregnant woman. Particularly at the later stages of pregnancy, the right to abortion does not protect an interest in killing a fetus as such. What it protects instead is the woman’s interest in not being physically, internally occupied by another creature against her will, the same interest that explains the right to use deadly force, if necessary, to stop a rapist. Though the fetus is innocent of any intentional wrongdoing and the rapist is not, the woman’s interest in repelling an unwanted physical intrusion is quite similar.
Yeah. That’s right. In her little metaphor the baby is a rapist.
But of course that doesn’t make sense because the woman likely became pregnant through an act of her own will whereas a rape takes place against a woman’s will.
Now, to be fair, Colb argues that the treatment of the “creature” as she calls the baby should be investigated as homicide (which it isn’t for some crazy reason.)
In fact, Colb encourages that even non-viable fetuses who are born accidentally should be treated well. Get this one:
When a nonviable fetus completely emerges from the womb alive, writhing, and gasping for breath, the right thing to do is – at the very least – to comfort the creature until it expires or to contact someone else who will.
That’s right. Contact someone who will. From the abortion clinic you should call a friend and say “Hey buddy, I just tried killing my baby but the creature was born anyway. I’m pretty sure it’ll expire soon so could you come on down here and hug the thing until it dies. Cool?”
But why is she even so concerned with being merciful to the baby that she’s allowing to be killed? It makes no sense to me. Because the baby emerged from a woman’s womb it’s not OK to kill it then but moments before it’s fair game.
In the end, Colb blames guess who for late term abortions. Come on make a guess. That’s right pro-lifers. I’m not kidding. Because pro-lifers are asking for things like parental consent they make it more difficult to procure early abortions so pro-lifers make late term abortions more likely.
Well, just file this one under the ever expanding file of Ivy League Lunacy. And these are the elites of our culture. No wonder we’re in such trouble.
April 2, 2009 at 4:22 am
Academic theorists are just like 3 year olds. They don’t quite get words like ‘why’ and ‘because.’
S. Murphy
April 2, 2009 at 5:13 am
Unreal. An innocent primate compared to a rapist. This is what a university degree does to a probably otherwise healthy brain.
April 2, 2009 at 6:14 am
I do not know if there is a way for me to coherently reply to Colb’s ideas.
How should we even begin to gainfully engage this kind of argument? It is worse than a willful ignorance – Colb (and many others) have considered the situation at hand, and decided that murder is acceptable.
April 2, 2009 at 6:15 am
If anything, it should be the other way around. When you abort a baby, who cannot defend itself, it’s worse than rape.
April 2, 2009 at 6:56 am
I really don’t think she said that the baby was a rapist.. she even said it herself, “…the fetus is innocent of any intentional wrongdoing…” She is saying that the woman didn’t want an intruder inside of her body which would be the rapist or the killer… but she never said a baby is a rapist… GET IT STRAIGHT.
April 2, 2009 at 7:01 am
OOOPPSSS I meant baby not killer. But it doesn’t matter anyway cus I just found out that this is a Christian website. THANK GOD you don’t have any validity in your silly posts because you’re driven by bias (i.e. MY GOD).
April 2, 2009 at 10:28 am
I believe, Matthew, that rather than a rapist, this person is treating the baby as a virus by which a woman is ‘internally occupied by another creature against her will’, not unlike the ‘creature’ in the Alien movies.
There is a dreadful struggle to avoid calling the child a child, for even in the author’s own mind such a thing would cause a collapse or change of heart. We must remember these unfortunate persons, who have conceived such a hatred for their own children.
April 2, 2009 at 11:36 am
Re: Anon 2:01am
Hmm. “this is a Christian website … you’re diven by bias”
You claim: If Christian, then driven by bias. Christian, thus bias.
So P → Q, P : Q.
What about P → Q, ~Q : ~P ?
Those who aren’t Christians aren’t driven by bias, right? Care to include some universal or existential quantifiers so you’re clear on the matter?
Wait! As a Christian, am I allowed to use logic? Help me out here, guys, I don’t want to do this incorrectly.
April 2, 2009 at 11:38 am
Oh, I got that modus tollens backward in phrasing: Anonymous isn’t driven by bias, thus we can conclude s/he isn’t Christian, according to his/her own premises.
I must have been temporarily confused by all my bias, won’t happen again.
April 2, 2009 at 12:56 pm
The one difference is that liberals don’t support the death penalty for actual rapists.
April 2, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Just remember — birth is a magical process that turns someone who can be killed without guilt into someone who ought to recieved comfort care.
I guess the child gets zapped with ‘morally significant’ beams on his way out or something.
And they accuse CATHOLICS of ‘magical thinking!’
April 2, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Sweet, Deirdre…’morally significant’ beams…
Brilliant!
April 2, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Deirdre,
Truly brilliant. One of the all time great comments.
April 2, 2009 at 3:35 pm
“Oh noes, I botched the abortion and now the baby, er, I mean creature, like in Alien, yeah, that’s right, was born alive and now squirming all over my nice clean operating room. Hmmm, what to do. Someone should hold it, except I don’t know anyone personally who has that much heart and decency. None of my nurses, definitely not my office manager. My wife? Naw, she is getting her nails done. I know! I will ask one of those crazy pro lifers who camp on my sidewalk day in and day out praying with those funny beads, that might work.”
I am sorry, this is all too ghastly not to be mocked as a means of coping. Uhhg.
April 2, 2009 at 3:38 pm
This “baby rapes the mom” argument is so old and tired… I heard it in college 20 years ago. The issue here is that the woman is unhappy with natural law: 1. sex produces babies 2. women are the ones with uteruses (“internally occupied) 3. There’s only one (normative) way out of a uterus. Violence is her only response, which is always the response when one rejects natural law.
Her argument is just the fallacy that comes from rejecting the Christian view of sex and love within marriage where sex in understood as naturally leading to children out of love with a loving spouse.
April 2, 2009 at 4:00 pm
JB, Chesterton put it quite nicely in his essay The Error of Impartiality.
“First he challenged me to find a black swan, and then he ruled out all my swans because they were black. The fact that all these great intellects had come to the Christian view was somehow or other a proof either that they were not great intellects or that they had not really come to that view. The argument thus stood in a charmingly convenient form: ‘All men that count have come to my conclusion; for if they come to your conclusion they do not count.'”
April 2, 2009 at 4:37 pm
“I just found out that this is a Christian website.”
That’s comedy gold, considering that my two-year-old sitting on my lap immediately yelled, “Look, Mommy, Jesus! Baby Jesus!” when I pulled up this site.
April 2, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Isn’t that basically Obama’s argument, that the baby should only be comforted?
If stopping a rapist is a good thing then one must argue that abortion is good thing. Wouldn’t this make supporters of this procedure pro-abortion not just pro-choice?
April 2, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Colb is a vile CREATURE. It should be exterminated…but of course comforted during the process.
April 2, 2009 at 9:27 pm
When the news reports of a mother murdering her young child, it is reported as “unthinkable” in the sense the relationship between a mother and child holds a higher sense of obligation in protect life, then murdering a stranger. I mean the ‘creature’ isn’t an alien, it’s biological kin.
I don’t understand how by law, as a mother, I’m held to a level to neither abuse or neglect children, if I harm my child it is a crime, but this rule isn’t applied when my children are internally within me?
For example where I live in Boston, where the news reported a mother failed to take her son with treatable leukemia to his doctor appointments and failed to give him the needed drugs for treatment. The son medical treatment was so neglected that his cancer spread to the point he was terminal. The mother was charged, and now that her son died from cancer, additional charges may be filed.
I understand the bodily integrity argument, but don’t you think as a civilized nation we would realize the exception to mothers carrying their own child, that an unborn child deserves the same protection from neglect an abuse from his/her mother?
BTW I’m Catholic so will all of my concerns blown off as bias?