The scandal of Virginia’s Democratic Governor Ralph Northam has peeled back the curtain on a little-known corner of the abortion industry. What happens when the infant survives an abortion to be born alive?
You’ve heard about late-term abortion, which occurs when the infant is far enough along to survive outside the womb. You’ve heard about partial-birth abortion, where the infant is partially delivered before being killed with a sharp jab to the base of his skull.
What Governor Northam advocated is even more gruesome than that. It is textbook infanticide. Governor Northam is not just a politician, he’s a medical doctor with a specialty in pediatric neurology. Even after 12 years as an elected official, Northam remains a member of the medical staff at a children’s hospital in Norfolk.
However, Northam’s comments did not just advocate for late term abortion. He plainly and unashamedly made the case for infanticide, the killing of infants after birth.
Speaking with the authority of a board-certified pediatrician, Northam said, “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then, a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Northam’s “discussion” would not be whether to wrap the baby in pink or blue. Not about whether to start a college fund. Not about teaching the new mother how to breastfeed her new baby.
No, the discussion would be whether to leave the baby on a table without care or nourishment until it stops breathing and turns cold. The practice of abandoning a newborn to die is known as infanticide, which the civilized world has prohibited since Christianity took over the Roman Empire in the fourth century A.D.
Many people think the story of mankind is a story of progress. They want to believe we gradually reject the barbarity of our past and move into a more “civilized” and “enlightened” way of thinking and interacting. Governor Northam’s heinous comments prove that the capacity for evil is still very much a socially acceptable thing for some political ideologies. That is why it is so important to be ever-vigilant against these statements and to be always ready to rebuke them for the barbarous evil they are.
