'Baby' cut from mom's womb

This ARTL article originally appeared on World Net Daily on July 31st 2009

The headlines from hundreds of news outlets tell an unintended story: The brutal Massachusetts murder of a pregnant mom and the child ripped from her womb has confirmed again what we all know about the mainstream media's abortion guilt.

Pregnant moms don't say, "I can feel the fetus kick." Not even an abortionist's pregnant wife would say... "The clump of cells just moved!" And the media knows it's a baby. Yet if Google News search results for July 28 and July 29, 2009 are any valid indication, hundreds of news stories reported the murder of "Darlene Haynes" without using the term "baby" to describe the child cut from her womb.

Consider ABC News as a case study. One ABC headline reads: "Slain pregnant woman lived in same building with accused fetus-stealer." Boy, talk about identify theft. The media avoid the term baby and prefer technical terms that describe states of early human development in their effort to de-humanize the unborn child and prolong the age of de-criminalized abortion. The suspect, Julie Corey, was charged with kidnapping. But in a murder case, ABC referring to the fetus as a kid seems just too close for comfort.

Just two weeks earlier ABC News did use the term baby to refer to an unborn child. Why? Because the context had nothing to do with murder, nor would it invoke the possibility of a dead child. ABC News referred to a fetus as a baby when Dutch researchers played vibroacoustic "sound to the growing baby" in the uterus. This ABC news report merely documents what we've been telling the public for years about the unborn child's ability to learn his mother's voice and even remember the songs she sings.

The July 29 ABC News headline, for example, "Mom-to-be Darlene Haynes killed, cops search for her fetus," is followed by this copy: "Police … are searching for a fetus that was ripped from her mother's womb. ... At 8 months, there is a chance the fetus could still be alive. …" If alive and outside of the mother's womb, it is technically inaccurate to refer to this little girl as a fetus. The murder of Wichita's George Tiller was not just a very late-term abortion.

ABC's "fetus-stealer" notwithstanding, a survey of worldwide headlines show that after the child was found alive, the media became more comfortable using the term "baby." The day before, CNN's headline, for example, read, "Woman killed, fetus cut from body." But after the little girl was found: "Baby cut from murdered mother's womb is alive," ran in the AFP and USA Today wrote of the, "Woman accused of cutting baby from mom's womb."

However, the man currently in the White House refused even to protect by law a "fetus" who survived an abortion. And WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah has just written of Barack Obama's radical science "czar" John Holdren, the same Holdren who once wrote, "The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being." So it is no surprise that the media is a bit squeamish when reporting of crimes committed against unborn children.

Early on, in 2007, WND anticipated the resurgence of the personhood movement with its landmark article "'Personhood' silver bullet to kill Roe v. Wade?" The movement focuses not on regulating murder but on the identity of the child and the inherent God-given right to life of the unborn. Various pollsters already show apparent results as with the dramatic increases documented by Gallup and others in the percentage of Americans who, like the personhood movement, seek to outlaw all abortions without exception. Surveys do not determine right and wrong, and legally it does not matter what Americans thought of slaves or what Nazis thought of Jews; our Creator God has revealed right and wrong by His enduring command: Do not murder. Yet Gallup and others have documented that our numbers have grown among those who think all abortion should be illegal. That is where the progress is being made, not in the muddy middle.

It appears also the personhood movement has robbed the abortionists of one of their favorite euphemisms: POC, meaning products of conception. Since the resurgence of personhood, abortionists seem fearful of even that term. Regardless, personhood groups nationwide are following the leadership of American Life League and Georgetown medical ethicist Dr. Dianne Irving in dropping the terms fertilization and conception. Instead, we define the term person as applying to each human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being. This and similar language can protect all twins and children created by technology, regardless of the method of reproduction. And for years, Planned Parenthood's abortion industry has told women that the chemicals they sell them do not kill a separate growing human being. But now they are telling women that personhood would ban certain "contraceptives." So the question arises, were they lying then, or are they lying now? (Of course, personhood has no effect on any contraceptive that only prevents fertilization, but it would ban chemical weapons that kill the baby.) Personhood exposes the lies: the abortionists' lies and the media's lies.

They all know exactly what they are doing. Before 4-D ultrasound, before 3-D, before 2-D, there was never a question of whether the baby in the womb was really an innocent human being.

Her little dead body has always cried out against the abortionist. The real question is, does anyone have the right to murder a baby? The answer is no, even if you call her a fetus. The continued momentum of personhood will both expose the bloodshed and move to protect every child by love and by law.

By Brian Rohrbough, founding president of American Right To Life. His son, Daniel, was murdered at Columbine High School. He then began to work publicly to expose America's culture of death and to fight to protect every child.