In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.Last week, Massachusetts joined 10 other U.S. jurisdictions in passing a bill that legalized abortion up to birth. Their new law gives physicians unlimited freedom to kill prenatal human beings — good news for “healthcare” providers such as Dr. Warren Hern, who have made it clear that they are happy to do such late-term abortions for virtually any reason at all.Indeed, in a recent interview, Hern was asked directly if he ever does second- and third-trimester abortions on women who have no medical condition and simply “don’t want the baby” or “changed their mind.”
“It happens all the time,” he said.Those shocked by the reality of such practices may rightly wonder what separates this kind of abortion from infanticide. Plenty of babies killed via these kinds of late abortions are more developed than babies delivered just a few weeks prematurely in the NICU.As U.S. institutions continue to adopt various forms of neo-pagan ethics, with the assumptions of Christian ethics marginalized, it is unsurprising that we are seeing a return to practices of abortion that are morally indistinguishable from infanticide. And even straight-up, no-chaser infanticide itself.In the ancient world of pagan Greece and Rome, there was no moral distinction between abortion and infanticide. Both were seen as forms of birth control, especially when it came to controlling the births of the poor and/or when the child was disabled. It wasn’t until Christianity came on the scene that such practices were challenged — and, for Christians too, there was no distinction made between abortion and infanticide. Both were prohibited by the early Catholic Church as forms of terrible violence directed at unimaginably vulnerable human beings.Take, for example, the case of “baby Gabriel.” He was the techno-project of a California couple who hired McKenna West to be his surrogate mother. But when that project turned out to be less optimized than the couple had hoped — at 20 weeks’ gestation, they discovered that Gabriel had a treatable heart condition that required significant surgery — they told West that she must kill the child. But she refused and relocated to Texas, a jurisdiction that protects children such as Gabriel and has excellent outcomes when treating his condition.But here’s a very important fact with which our culture needs to come to terms: Even after Gabriel was born, his parents could still try to ensure his death.A newborn baby is seen in a hospital’s baby nursery as the nation’s fertility rate is discussed. (Getty Images)
