I believe most mothers no matter the circumstance want to love their children. And that it is highly unusual for a mom to bear a child and not love that child. This is in part why abortion is an affront to women: to their dignity and personhood, because it denies what is natural and normal–sex, leading to pregnancy, leading to children.
So when a baby is born, and the mom immediately kills that baby of her own volition, what am I to understand?
I have a couple of different responses swimming around in my head (along with the cold virus that hit yesterday) right now:
She should be blamed and take responsibility.
She must be mentally ill to do such a thing.
Or she is following the abortion-friendly culture we have. Five minutes before birth in a sanctified legal clinic and this would not be in the news.
(cross-posted to The Shotgun)
by 
I am outraged at this case, but I feel something similar to what you have said, Andrea. This woman should be charged with pre-meditated murder, of course, but what a hypocritical country we are that we express outrage at a baby killed at one day old and turn a blind eye to the thousands of babies thrown away every day in hospitals across Canada by doctors who are supposed to protect lives. I am so upset this morning. I need to go run to clear my head.
Running is what I do to clear my head. Good plan.
I don’t understand how she could hide her pregnancy and people around believed her.
Baggy shirts can’t hide progressive month to month weight gain. How come nobody asked any questions, how come nobody could help?
That’s my question in this tragic situation, which is very sad indeed.
From the report in the paper, this was not a premeditated cold-blooded murder, but a result of severe moral and even psychological confusion.
Apparently the young woman hid her pregnancy from the father because she thought he might force her to have an abortion. How ironic! I think that the father should be implicated as well. it’s not good enough to say I’m not ready to be a father and leave her to face the consequences of an unexpected pregnancy.
Also, it highlights the false world of living together as man and wife without the commitment and blessing of marriage that might have bestowed some form of understanding on the couple that having a “relationship” means more than sex. What good is any kind of friendship or loving relationship if one party is ready to move on so easily? Here a human life – a blond, blue-eyed, healthy boy – was weighed and found wanting against . . . what? Personal freedom? To do what?
Although I think her actions are the same as the woman in New Brunswick who killed her 12 -year-old daughter so she wouldn’t have to lose her boyfriend, I wonder: where were her family and friends to advise her. Would she listen to them?
When people in our society complain about the “guilt” that religion or morality creates, maybe what they don’t understand is that perhaps a little guilt, a little alertness, some willingness to interfere with another person’s autonomy beforehand might save a life, or at least a lifetime of guilt and sorrow for a heinous deed.
I find it very hard to feel any sympathy for a woman who would take the life of her own child simply because she doesn’t want to lose “the man of her dreams”. Many people face hard decisions in life on a daily basis, they don’t resolve the problem by committing murder. I think we have become a society that sees the murder of a newborn as just another type of abortion. I guess if I could find a difference it would be that women having abortions have not held their babies so its more impersonal. How any decent, caring human being could hold a newborn baby and then kill it is beyond my comprehension, but I will not diminish her crime by saying she must have been crazy. Far too often, people get away with murder in our country by claiming mental illness. As for the man’s culpability, from all reports I have heard, the father knew nothing of the pregnancy. Whatever the woman may have assumed his reaction would be, he can not be held responsible for her actions if he had no idea what was going on. She killed her baby and should be held responsible.
It’s hard not to wonder why people are so outraged when, as you say, five minutes pre-birth in a clinic and it wouldn’t even be news. It really ought to highlight that hypocrisy more than it does. Sort of ironic too that while it’s all portrayed as a “woman’s choice,” it’s only a valid choice when she pays a doctor to do the killing for her.
I saw a headline referring this case wondering why mothers who kill are “handled with kid gloves.” Well, maybe that also stems from the unavoidable comparison between infanticide and abortion.
I can’t help wondering about the “boyfriend” too. I can’t get my head around these people having boyfriends no matter what they do – like whoever married Karla Homolka. It’s just bizarre.