I warn you, this story is very disturbing.
In Virginia, a mother gave birth to her baby and then suffocated it. Virginia law enforcement is powerless to charge her. As Investigator Tracy Emerson put it:
“In the state of Virginia, as long as the umbilical cord is attached and [the] placenta is still in the mother, if the baby comes out alive, the mother can do whatever she wants to that baby to kill it,” Emerson reports. “She can shoot the baby, stab the baby or anything as long as it is still attached to her in some form by umbilical cord or something, and it’s no crime in the state of Virginia.”
This not the first time that this has happened in Virginia, but the abortion lobby has legislators too scared to act. As long as the baby is “attached” to the mother and it is not a person.
This case highlights the abhorrent absurdity of defining down “personhood” to protect abortion. The abortion lobby will let many more babies die this way rather than enter the discussion on when the baby becomes a person.
Terrible are the wages of sin.
tip to Kristen.
December 20, 2009 at 4:38 am
Hmmm, seems like Virginia abortionists can now do their job a little easier…just induce labor and deliver the live baby, then kill it while the cord is still attached. Less complicated for the abortionists, no need to worry that a baby might somehow get all the way out with the audacity to still have a heartbeat or daring to take a first breath. No need to worry about that in Virginia.
The legal killing of newborns has been brewing for many years in some parts of the world, including recommendations by "doctors" in the Netherlands that babies could be killed up to a month after birth if the baby has some sort of problem, and the decision would be made by doctors judging the baby's quality of life.
December 21, 2009 at 3:15 am
Julie,
I must point out that the language of the VA code says that the one (person) "killing the fetus of another" is (still) to be prosecuted under the code. If one other than the woman induces labor and kills the baby while s/he is still attached by the cord ot the mother, the act is still not legal.
December 21, 2009 at 8:11 pm
It's things like this that make me believe in 2012. No pun intended.
December 30, 2009 at 8:23 pm
I found this article (from the alluded-to 2006 case) from Associated Content. It may shed some light on what investigators were thinking when they said they could not prosecute this woman:
According to the Virginia-Pilot, Skinner, now 23, was "charged in Circuit Court with producing an abortion or miscarriage, a felony charge that her attorney argues cannot be used to prosecute a woman who ends her own pregnancy."
A lower court judge had already thrown out a charge of producing an abortion against Skinner, concluding that the law was not aimed at pregnant mothers who harm themselves or their yet-to-be born children…Circuit Court Judge Westbrook Parker heard arguments in Skinner's case, including a motion to dismiss the case, and decided to drop the felony charge against Tammy Skinner, effectively ending all prosecution…"