Disturbing Indictment

By | March 11, 2004

Woman refuses C-section, is charged when baby stillborn

Interestingly enough, this story disturbs me, but not for the reason you might think. Actually, the brief quote that ends the article describes my fear. It is quite ironic that it is permissible to “abort” an unborn child, but a crime when one of the babies dies naturally, simply because medical action could have been taken, that may have helped. Why it concerns me is this, in the case of an abortion, a person actively goes and decides to terminate the pregnancy. They go out of their way, and use their time and money to make this happen. In this case, a woman simply didn’t want a c-section. While I support life, and it seems that in this case the woman probably should have chose that course of action, I don’t think I agree with the choice to charge this woman with murder. It seems to be a case of the government over stepping it bounds to me. It’s one thing to have a law that restricts options. For example, if abortion was illegal, that is one choice you wouldn’t have. In this case however, it seems that the person is charged because of not making the choice the government wanted her to. My thought is, where does this lead? What’s next? Would a person eventually be at risk because of the way they choose to give birth? Although it doesn’t sound like it was a great reason here, there might be many reasons why a person might not want a c-section. Who has to pay for it? I hope I’m making some sense here. In one case, the government says you can’t do this, in the other it’s saying you must do this.

Share Button

Thank you for subscribing to my weekly digest email! Please check your inbox in order to confirm your subscription. If you don’t receive the confirmation email, check your spam folder. You may add DLWebster@DL-Webster.com to your address book in order to prevent my emails from being marked as spam.