Killing Prenatal Children Until Birth is Legal in the USA

Just a few minutes ago, it would have been legal to kill this little girl by injecting digoxin into her heart thanks to the United States Supreme Court rulings of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, both decided in January, 1973.

Doe is significant primarily because it describes the extent of the post-viability health exception that is also used in Roe. In Doe, the Court defined “health” to include not just physical health, but also psychological, mental and emotional health. The Court cited age, familial circumstances and anything relevant to the mother’s general feeling of well being as reasons that would justify a late-term abortion—and thus override what Roe decided was a legitimate state interest in protecting the preborn after viability. The Court explained:

The medical judgment [for a late-term abortion] may be exercised in the light of all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health. This allows the attending physician the room he needs to make his best medical judgment. And it is room that operates for the benefit, not the disadvantage, of the pregnant woman.

On this criteria, virtually any reason a mother gives to have a third-trimester abortion is sufficient. “After viability, the state may ‘proscribe’ abortion only when the woman considering abortion can find no physician willing to say that her mental health would, for example, be ‘taxed by child care’ or suffer ‘distress … associated with the unwanted child,’” write Dennis J. Horan and Thomas J. Balch. In effect, if a woman could find an abortionist willing to perform a third-trimester abortion, she could have one.

There is only one philosophy regarding the beginning of life that is both moral and logical: our life, and thus our humanity, begins at the moment of fertilization. Any other attempt at defining the point at which we become a human being is fraught with hypocrisy and has led to the killing of millions of innocent children while awaiting their birth.

Simply stated – it’s wrong to intentionally kill prenatal children. Period.