April 22, 2004
Suffer The Children
Two instances show the disposability of life and the animals who dispose of it...
A series of car bombs went off in Basra, Iraq killing nearly 70 people, including some 18 children who reportedly were burned alive in their schoolbus when the bombs went off.
In Massachussetts, a young college student who denied being pregnant and threw her child in the dumpster to die was given just one year in jail.
As the outrage over the attacks in Basra spreads, and demands for reprisal grow, it's important to remember it's not just Al Qaeda that devalues human life.
What defense can be given for an upstart 19 year old college student who carried her child to term and then wrapped it in towels and a trashbag, throwing it out like last nights takeout dinner? Does someone dare say between she and those responsible in Basra who the more callous soul is? Are any of these children less dead, all taken by the knowing, purposeful acts of a bottomless, selfish evil?
What complicity do we all have when we treat the cruel, purposeful destruction of posterity as less than insider trading? Who will be out first, the girl who destroyed a human life or Martha Stewart?
One year is an outrage. If the father had killed the child, he'd be gone for 20 years to life - this is indisputable. When did this nation become an apologist for infanticide? Is it due to the numbing effect of a nation's sacramental view of abortion rights? Have we devalued infants so much as disposable choices that we no longer clearly see the horrific nature of infanticide when practiced by the mother, because we are conditioned to accept it in the womb? We are outraged at Scott Peterson and the death of his wife and unborn son, going so far as to enact legislation to create an unborn victim's bill.
But again, that was the father...