Was It Abortion Or Murder?

I have deliberately stayed away from the abortion topic on this site. It is a highly charged debate and the chances of changing any minds on the issue are extremely slim. However, I saw this story and just had to remark on it. Here's a related article.

An 18 year old girl goes to an abortion clinic and pays the doctor to terminate her 23 week pregnancy. She was scheduled for the abortion three days later, but before the abortion could be performed, the girl went into labor and delivered a baby girl. The infant was then stuffed into a biohazard bag and tossed in the trash. The story says that people on both sides of the debate are shocked.

The girl is now suing the clinic and authorities are considering filing murder charges.

Here's my questions for the pro abortion crowd. If the baby...okay, fetus...okay, growth (happy now?) was aborted properly, the end result would have been exactly the same. So why are you shocked? If you support abortion, then you must declare the growth was not a human being. Otherwise, it would be murder. So, what makes it harder for you to swallow terminating this fetus a few inches away from where it was scheduled to be terminated? To a pro abortion person, this should simply be a matter of location.

Now, here is my question for the 18 year old girl. You paid a doctor $1200 to take the fetus in your body and perform a procedure that would result in the fetus no longer being alive. You got exactly what you paid for. Why are you suing?

Here are some telling quotes from the girl's attorneys.

"I don't care what your politics are, what your morals are, this should not be happening in our community"

What should not be happening? An abortion ending in the planned results - a dead fetus and a girl who is not a mother?

"The baby was just treated as a piece of garbage."

How are other abortion byproducts treated?

"She came face to face with a human being and that changed everything."

Why? Was it facing the baby she had paid to have aborted that changed everything? Was it the realization that this 'thing' was actually a baby? Notice that her lawyers keep using terms like baby and human. If the girl were charged with murder for having a viable baby aborted, they would be using terms like fetus.

Here's another question for the girl - if coming "face to face with a human being" truly "changed everything," then why did you do nothing until after police recovered the decomposing body a week later after acting on an anonymous tip? Why weren't you contacting someone after you were released? Why did you wait three years before deciding to sue? Did some ambulance chasers approach you with promises of a big payday?

Here's an amazing quote from the president of the local NOW chapter. "It really disturbed me, I know that there are clinics out there like this. And I hope that we can keep (women) from going to these types of clinics."

Exactly why does it disturb you?

This has always been my feeling on abortions. I have tried to simplify it as much as possible to remove emotion (as much as emotion can be removed from the debate).

You either believe that a fetus is alive or not, that it's a human or not. If you believe a fetus is alive, then you would have a really hard time rationalizing abortion as anything but murder. If you believe a fetus is not alive, then abortion is no big deal, similar to a surgical procedure to remove a tumor.

You can't logically be halfway on the fence on this. A fetus is either alive or not. Those who believe that life begins at conception are obviously against abortion.

So, this story should anger those who are already against abortion. But to those who are pro abortion, you logically should not be bothered by this story at all. To express shock or to say it "disturbs" you is disingenuous at best, and smacks of petty pandering at worst.