We draw arbitary lines in the sand all the time.
Make love to your girl friend the night before her sixteenth birthday and you become a child abuser and go on the sex offenders register; the following day, you can marry her and set off into your joint future with the good wishes of the State ringing in your ears.
There are other divisions at the outer edges of hard law equally difficult to understand.
Qualify as a Doctor and you can legally starve and dehydrate a person unto death, nay, be ordered to do so by the state; decide as a Mother to give your brain damaged son a painless death, and you will be jailed for Murder.
I was reminded of this when I opened the French papers today.
The French press is consumed with condemnation of Celine Lesage, who smothered all six of her children as she gave birth to them alone in her apartment. This case follows hot on the heels of that of Veronique Courjault who was sentenced to eight years in prison for smothering three of her live born children as they were born.
I personally find it difficult to feel outrage at the idea of a Mother ‘smothering a new born child and heartlessly stashing the body in a freezer’, and yet uphold the right of tens of thousands of women to have their pregnancy terminated by tearing a child limb from limb in a ‘late abortion’ and flushing the evidence down a hospital sluice.
Am I alone in finding the distinction that ‘one solitary breath from the infant’ makes, an unsatisfactory explanation? Particulary since 1 in 30 ‘late abortions’ who have been delivered intact have been known to take that one solitary breath.
Anna is the landlady of the Raccoon Arms. She lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France and still takes a keen interest in British politics.
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What do you define as a late abortion? A foetus is not considered viable before 22 – 24 weeks, due to under-developed lungs, etc., so it might try to draw breath, but could not survive. But using emotive terms, such as “child” & “infant”, when referring to an aborted foetus, does not help clear discussion.
Two of my children were delivered at 24 weeks. Both survived and thrive. One child in the hospital was born and survived at 22 weeks.
The taking of a child’s life, at 9 months, 6 months, 4 weeks or 1 day is murder.
The line, on this occasion, is the drawn across the threshold of the bedroom door, when ‘babymaking’ is consented to.
No, I find it unsatisfactory.
But then, there are going to be many parts of our lives where what is required to get by does not fit the pattern of clear and logical standards. Fudge is required. It is the inability to realise that obvious truth that makes so many lefties interfere where they are not wanted.
I have been guilty of most of the offences you describe. I don’t feel like a criminal though.
Great point well put. Problem is, I imagine, that trying to generalise when you’re dealing with huge numbers of very different people is impossible.
The ridiculous one I always thought was when you had your kid – on 5th or 6th April, for accounting purposes.
So, the answer? Don’t generalise. Don’t try to legislate everything. Lawyers. accountants and the like are no more, in fact probably less, qualified to run a corporation the size of Great Britain.
I have little to no respect for the law and lawyers etc though. I have a suspicion that you don’t want to hear that
No Infanticide Act in France, then. “Qualify as a Doctor and you can legally starve and dehydrate a person unto death, nay, be ordered to do so by the state.” Lord Dawson, who spoke on the second reading of the Infanticide Bill in 1938, killed George V by lethal injection and was given a viscountcy for his trouble: another case of a doctor playing God. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Dawson,_1st_Viscount_Dawson_of_Penn
To Ed P
“A foetus is not considered viable before 22
To Ted Treen
1. Most medics with whom I’ve discussed it.
2. Try reading carefully before “venting your spleen”. I said, “the use of emotive terms does not help clear discussion”. Are you really unable to understand that?
As for the gratuitous insults, well, I neither support NuLiebour nor read the Guardian. You comment did not really add anything of value to a contentious and emotive topic, did it?
I’m with the English Viking on this; the arbitrary line in the sand starts and end at the bedroom door. Why are children forced to pay for the mistakes of their parents? It enhances the belief that we are merely meat for the grinder rather than independent human beings.
To Ed P
Not quite, old son,
1. Most medics would at one time – within the comparatively recent past – have stated certain conditions are terminal – with but a brief time until death. Advances in neo-natal medicine and medical treatment, usually understood better by paediatricians involved with neo-natal care than by cardiac surgeons, GPs or a host of other non-natal specialists, means that the viability term is reducing continually.
2. You initially wrote “…using emotive terms, such as