Thursday, December 17, 2009

Virginia Infanticide Case

Diogenese does justice to the story out of Virginia about the Mother who killed her child and is "free as a bird."

"A woman in Virginia suffocated her newborn last week. Because the mother and child were still connected by the umbilicus and placenta at the time the former dispatched the latter, the act is considered no different from clipping a toenail. You go, girl!

Momma is free as the breeze:

“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 with that baby to kill it,” said Investigator Tracy Emerson. “She could shoot the baby, stab the baby. As long as it’s still attached to her in some form by umbilical cord or something it’s no crime in the state of Virginia.”

The news story attributes the authorities’ inability to prosecute the murder to a 'loophole in state law.' But it isn’t a loophole. It’s a carefully crafted legal fiction whose sole purpose is to declare the unborn child as something less than human in order to permit its mother to kill it...."


"Our society tolerates the gross incoherence of these legal fictions because the fictions themselves are necessary lies, necessary to the public justification of abortion. You'll notice that even the journalists find the business difficult to report without knotting themselves in contradictions. Of this case they write, 'Because the mother and baby were still connected by the umbilical cord and placenta, state law does not consider the baby to be a separate life.' They're saying, in short, state law does not consider the baby to be a baby.

Put that way, something looks wrong."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Virginia law or lack thereof does not trump federal law. What about the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act passed in 2002? George Bush said it "ensures that every infant born alive -- including an infant who survives an abortion procedure -- is considered a person under federal law."

Unknown said...

Unfortunately, the Federal law only covers infanticide on Federal property. The only case I know of someone being charged with infanticide was when the defendant was a Native American under the jurisdiction of tribal/Federal law.