“In the state of Virginia as long as the umbilical cord is attached and the placenta is still in the mother, if the baby comes out alive the mother can do whatever she wants to with that baby to kill it,“ said Investigator Tracy Emerson. “She could shoot the baby, stab the baby. As long as it’s still attached to her in some form by umbilical cord or something it’s no crime in the state of Virginia.“
(...)
Emerson said the woman knew she was pregnant and had received prenatal care. He said the baby was full-term, due Tuesday. The medical examiner says the baby was born healthy. An autopsy is being performed. The baby’s body will then be released to the family.
Why are people upset? The woman was only exercising her reproductive choice. She has bodily autonomy, right? As long as the baby is attached, it's still part of her body.
And if that baby has to die in the name of reproductive choice, well tough luck, full-term "fetus"!
That's the logic of "my body, my choice!" If the fetus has to die for my sake, too bad! I decide and no one else matters!
No full-term abortions in this world. Sure.
UPDATE:
I just found this commentary from Diogenes on the same topic (same title, too!)
No one present at a birth and gazing at the emergent flesh -- not the nurse, not the doctor, not the recorder, not the father -- knows whether he's looking at a baby or looking at surgical waste. No one knows whether it’s a new patient, citizen, child (which he has to tend to), or whether it's a mass of superfluous tissue (which he has to dispose of). Until the arbitrary law arbitrarily kicks in, it's acey deucy: mother’s choice decides all.
Our society tolerates the gross incoherence of these legal fictions because the fictions themselves are necessary lies, necessary to the public justification of abortion. You'll notice that even the journalists find the business difficult to report without knotting themselves in contradictions. Of this case they write, "Because the mother and baby were still connected by the umbilical cord and placenta, state law does not consider the baby to be a separate life." They're saying, in short, state law does not consider the baby to be a baby.
Put that way, something looks wrong.
The abortion culture will implode under the weight of its own contradictions. Just like communism.
