John Andrew Welden is charged with the murder of a person who was never
born.
As Tampa’s WFTS-TV news reports, Welden is facing first-degree murder
charges for allegedly giving his pregnant girlfriend Remee Lee an abortion pill
and telling her it was an antibiotic.
(Remee Lee)
Welden worked in his father’s Florida
clinic, a “specialty infertility practice.”
When Lee began bleeding and experiencing cramps, she went to her local
hospital, where doctors informed her the container labeled as amoxicillin was
in fact the labor-inducing Cytotec. The fetus died in utero.
“I was never going
to do anything but go full term with it,” she told reporters this week. “And he
didn’t want me to.” It’s an appalling tale, which will once
again force us to ponder what constitutes a human life — and when one has taken
it.
Very different
fetal-homicide laws are on the books in roughly 80
percent of American states.
In Arizona, for example, the charge can
apply toward “any stage of development” for a fetus, while Arkansas limits it
to an “unborn child of 12 weeks or more gestation.” South Dakota stipulates the
accused must have known, “or reasonably should have known, that a woman bearing
an unborn child was pregnant.”
In Welden’s case, he’s
being charged under the Protection of Unborn Children Act. His state has tough
laws for killing the unborn that also include DUI manslaughter, vehicular
homicide and willful killing. In Ohio, where kidnapping suspect Ariel Castro
will stand trial, he faces possible charges of aggravated murder.
Castro is accused of allegedly
beating one of his reported victims until she miscarried the
pregnancies she endured in captivity. Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy
McGinty has said he will pursue “each act of aggravated murder” — and a
conviction could lead to the death penalty.
And in Philadelphia, of
course, Kermit Gosnell was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder for
killing three infants — by severing their spinal cords – who were born
live during the late-term abortions he provided. Pennsylvania law has a whole
category of offenses, including first- and second-degree murder, for any unborn
child “from fertilization until live birth.”
What distinguishes the Gosnell
case — and has often been lost in all the shouting about it — was that the
murder charges were for babies, not fetuses. Yet the issue of what constitutes
the taking a life is not always an easy one to discuss or decide.
As much as we need the
law to be clear, the reality of life and death is often far more ambiguous. As
Jon Hurdle and Trip Gabriel noted this week in the New York Times, much of the
furor over cases like Gosnell’s is the question of “why a procedure done to a living baby
outside the womb is murder, but destroying a fetus of similar
gestation before delivery can be legal.” Remee Lee, meanwhile, was six
weeks and five days pregnant when she lost her baby.
Should taking a life that
wouldn’t have been viable outside the womb carry the same consequences as
killing an adult? Would the alleged crime be different if she’d been three
months pregnant? Six months? Nine?
I believe that human life
begins at conception. I believe that if you force a woman, either by
violence or deception, to lose a fetus, you have taken a life. But I also
shudder at the prospect of the anti-choice lobby exploiting revolting crimes to
prevent women from access to their constitutional right to abortion.
We have
spent the last several years watching it happen, as abortion opponents have
tried to leverage fetal-protection laws to chip away
at choice. That’s why we need to continue to be vigilant in
articulating the difference between a choice a woman makes and an act of
violence against her body and her fetus, an act that robs her of that very
freedom she is entitled to. We must be clear that being pro-choice is not
tantamount to condoning repulsive, criminal behavior
Remee Lee told
reporters this week that she’s grieving because she “dreams of becoming a mom.”
And this, she says, “was my chance.”
SCRIPTURES
JOB 8: 11Can the rush grow up without mire? can the flag grow without water?
12Whilst
it is yet in his greenness, and not cut
down, it withereth before any other herb.
13So
are the paths of all that forget God; and
the hypocrite's hope shall perish:
14Whose
hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall
be a spider's web.
15He
shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand: he shall hold it fast, but
it shall not endure.
EZEKIEL 3: 4And he said unto me, Son of man, go, get thee unto
the house of Israel, and speak with my words unto them. 5For thou art
not sent to a people of a strange speech and of an hard language, but to the house of Israel; 6Not to many people of a strange speech and of an
hard language, whose words thou canst not understand. Surely, had I sent thee
to them, they would have hearkened unto thee. 7But the house of Israel will not hearken unto thee;
for they will not hearken unto me: for all the house of Israel are impudent and hardhearted.
EXODUS 20: 13Thou shalt not kill.
JOB 21: 7Wherefore
do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?
8Their
seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their
eyes.
9Their
houses are safe from fear, neither is the
rod of God upon them.
10Their
bull gendereth, and faileth not; their cow calveth, and casteth not her calf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment