Even though it’s old news and Scott Roeder has been found guilty on all charges related to the murder of Dr. George Tiller, this article from the NY Times made me feel somewhat sick to my stomach when I read it.
I feel like I have a pretty firm respect for people who are opposed to abortion, but the idea that saving fetuses justifies a necessity defense makes my blood run cold. Mostly, I think, because I could see where this sort of thing would go. I could rhapsodize at length about the problems that arise when medical professionals see themselves as “rescuing” babies by cutting into their mothers over their strenuous objection. One particularly disturbing example of this type of objectification of pregnant women arose in the Baby Boy Doe case out of Illinois. In re Baby Boy Doe, 260 Ill.App.3d. 392 (Ill.App. 1 Dist. 1994). During the hearing in that case, then-Public Advocate Patrick Murphy asked the appellate panel: “Is this just a mass of human cells or is it a real life being kept prisoner in its mother’s womb and tied to an oxygen source that is not working? This is no different than a person in a hospital being tied to a respirator that is working inefficiently.” Because we know that pregnant women keep their babies hostage.
But no, what’s more chilling is an example from Maryland where a man savagely beat his pregnant wife with a baseball bat to protect his fetus from the mother’s drug addiction. Or a story recounted by a clinic escort on Feministing wherein a woman miscarried as a result of an assault by clinic protesters who (mistakenly, it appears) thought she was going to get an abortion. When the fetus is privileged over the woman carrying it, I’ve got a problem.
Anyway, there’s not too much more for me to see except that Randall Terry is scary and insane, stating there that the trial is a “scam” because Roeder isn’t being allowed to polemicize against abortion on the stand.
…cue circus music…
