The other day I met Jill Stanek in Dunedin as she was traveling through New Zealand on the Pro Life Tour. Jill has a pretty horrific story to tell – but she’s not the only one by any means who has seen this. Watch the clip below where she is interviewed by Bill O’Reilly and explains “live birth abortion,” a procedure where a living and often perfectly healthy but very premature baby is born so that it will die:
Becoming the most liberal senator in the USA, Barack Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Bill, which stipulated that all children born alive have the same constitutional rights as anyone else (while not denying that they should be afforded those rights earlier).
The reality is that I think when it comes down to the fundamental factors that make abortion wrong, an abortion at nine weeks has those factors no less than one of these live birth abortions at twenty weeks. This infanticide in the name of late term abortion is no less homicide than the killing of a foetus at nine weeks. But there’s still an obvious aggravating factor in these late term killings, and it’s this: Unbelievable callousness. People are willing, in scenarios where it is impossible to feign ignorance about the development of the child, where the child is present right in front of your eyes, where they hold the child, watch him or her move and struggle to breathe, where they wrap it in a blanket, where in some cases they even have the child baptised (!!!), deliberately kill that child, contend that no wrong is done, no unjust death has occurred, and that the cost is acceptable to pay the toll of reproductive freedom. Waving that banner, pursuing that holy cause – The idol is so important to some that they will, with full knowledge and understanding, literally sacrifice children to it.
Blair
Glenn this is a real issue, as you well know for NZ as well. As a health professional working here in NZ (and new to my work when the following happened) I as unexpectedly asked to assist in a particular theatre in a NZ hospital on arrival to work one day (I was a theatre staff member back then). Checking the theatre list I realised this was the TOP list (termination of pregnancy list – we were not allowed to use abortion as it was a subjective emotionally loaded term!). This was the only list in the hospital where I worked where the names of the patients were omitted, only gender and age were stated, no surgeons name ever appeared on the list! This was unacceptable for any other operating list we used.
I exercised my professional right and stated my refusal to my supervisor to work on that list. All hell broke loose as I was berated, shouted at and told I must. I held my ground and said professionally I was free to refuse and my supervisor new I was correct and that her intimidation of me was not going to work. I was 23 at the time shaking in my boots. My supervisor new I was a Christian. She then chose the next Christian staff member and told me to tell them they had to work in that theatre. I informed her of what had just happened to me and what was going to be asked of her – I refused to instruct her to do so and strongly encouraged her to take the same stance. This person did not feel she could and to her great distress (she was a young woman, younger than myself back then) she assisted on a list that was in total opposition to her beliefs. So, there is more than one perspective on this issue. There is the primary issue itself and from my experience there is the bullying of staff into doing this work when it is against there personal, professional and religious convictions and it is has happened right here in NZ. I do not know if this still occurs in the hospital I was working in.
Dave
“The idol is so important to some that they will, with full knowledge and understanding, literally sacrifice children to it.”
That’s a point I think should be emphasized. I’d love to see highway billboards saying something like “Human sacrifice should be illegal – vote accordingly”