The word “Infanticide” comes from two Latin words, “infans” (an infant) and “caedere” (to kill). So, “infanticide” is “killing an infant.”
Up to a few years ago I was under the false impression that infanticide was a very unusual occurrence especially in “civilized” places – just as, up to a dozen years ago, I thought that abortion was a very exceptional happening. Then I read the following statement by Dr. C. E. Koop, at present Surgeon General for the United States. He said, “Well, you all know that infanticide is being practiced right now in this country (U.S.A.) and I guess the thing that saddens me most is that it is being practiced by the segment of our profession which has always stood in the role of advocate for the love of children.” I decided to do some research on infanticide in the United States.
As night follows day
What might be termed an “epidemic of infanticide” followed the 1973 Supreme Court decision, which declared that an unborn baby is not a human person and therefore does not have any rights – not even the right to be allowed to live. Law is one thing; Logic and reason another, it seems.
If a doctor is permitted by law to kill a baby before it is born, what is to stop him from killing it after it is born? Every doctor – with one sad exception – knows that a baby in its mother’s womb is a human being. Therefore, why quibble over the small question of time and place?
So if a baby, not wanted by its parents, is by an “unfortunate” accident born alive during an abortion procedure, what do you do with it? Why not just kill it? If you allow it to survive you will incur the anger of the parents and the embarrassment of having “botched” a simple operation! The police are not looking in the windows and the staff is on your side from the start.
The quality of life
That is one aspect of the subject. Another is the question of the newborn baby who appears to be a poor prospect for attaining “meaningful humanhood.” After all, doesn’t society need full-bloodied, healthy, intelligent human beings like ourselves? So why allow these lesser human breeds to survive and become a drag on society and a burden on the taxpayer? It’s all very simple and logical and you don’t have the cops looking over your shoulder in the operating room.
Does this really happen in the most sophisticated country in the world? Yes, it does! After the Supreme Court abortion decision of 1973, 43 babies were “allowed to die” at Yale New Haven Hospital intensive care nursery. Vital treatment was deliberately withheld. (Newsweek, Nov. 1973)
Thousands of babies
According to the Stanford Law Review February 1978, “Every year thousands of parents decide to withhold or withdraw medical treatment needed to keep their severely defective newborns alive.” Yet, as far as the general public is concerned, this – unlike abortion – is largely a hidden practice. But, now and then, there is publicly and a court case follows. I have space to relate only one such case, but it should be sufficient to indicate what is happening to society.
The Waddill case
In 1977, Dr. William Waddill performed a saline abortion on a seven-month fetus. But the injection did not “take” and the baby girl was delivered alive. The doctor panicked and called in a pediatrician, Dr. Cornelsen. After the incident, Dr. Cornelsen could not live with his conscience and he reported what had happened to the police. Dr. Waddill was charged with murder. During the first trial, Dr. Cornelsen told the jury that he had seen Dr. Waddill attempt three times to strangle the baby. He finally succeeded in the fourth attempt. There was also evidence from the autopsy that the baby had died from strangulation.
The first trial resulted in a hung jury and the judge declared a mistrial. In the second trial, by a majority of eleven to one, the charges against the Doctor were dismissed. After the second trial the one juror who held out for a guilty verdict told reporters that the other jurors discounted the evidence given on the principle that, “the baby was already dead because the mother wanted it dead!”
An abortionist doctor has been quoted as saying, “If you agree to do an abortion, you can’t present a woman with a live infant. It is a breach of contract.” So, if the baby is born alive by mistake – you just strangle it.
What has happened to the human race?
Dr. Eugene Diamond, professor of pediatrics as the Stritch School of Medicine in U.S. sums it up thus, “American physicians have been the instruments responsible for the deaths of millions of aborted babies. Now, putting aside the curettes and salt syringes – our profession lifts its eyes above the windows of the abortorium and gazes into the nursery.” That gaze is, cool, professional, speculative and sinister. With social acceptance of infanticide – and its just around the corner – it envisages a new way to dispose of an old problem – the congenitally-deformed child. The life of the baby is weighed in the balance against parental hardship, financial burden, general family welfare and its own chances of attaining the “quality of life” desired by modern society. And guess who loses!
Everything has happened before. Here is a quote from the book, What Ever Happened to the Human Race? by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop. It is in reference to what happened in Germany when Hitler attained the pinnacle of power. “The first to be killed were the aged, the infirm, the senile, the mentally retarded and defective children. Eventually, when World War II approached, the doomed undesirables included epileptics, World War I amputees, children with badly modeled ears and even bed wetters. Physicians took part in this planning on matters of life and death to save society’s money.” (p. 106).
Could it happen in Canada?
I believe it is happening but not yet come to light. But it has got to come because infanticide follows abortion as night follows day! In Judgment at Nuremberg one of the condemned Germans said, “We didn’t think it would go that far.” The American Judge replied, “It went that far the first time you condemned an innocent human being to death.”
