This morning I woke up to a stark contrast. On one hand, a 13 year old girl was ordered by an Italian judge to abort her baby.[1] On the other, a tiny little baby born only 21 weeks and six days after conception at the end of October is going home, with a hard but hopeful future ahead of her.[2]
After the length of a trial, how much younger than this little girl could the now dead Italian baby have been? What failure of understanding, of compassion, or of thought prevented that court from seeing that baby as human?
For even now, several months later, little Amillia is only 26 inches long and about 4.5 pounds. Born much shorter and smaller than that, at ten ounces and 9.5 inches long, she was already undoubtedly a human child. For all most babies that premature do not survive (she is, I believe, the first to survive this long), she has had a chance at life, and doctors report that she has an "excellent" prognosis. I will restate this important point: she has an "excellent" chance of having a full life.
But even had she not, even had she died, we would face to day knowing that we, as society, and in a more particular way her doctors, nurses and most importantly her family had done all that we can and could to give her that chance. In Italy there is a tiny baby, most likely denied even a funeral mass, who is now dead, and a young (too young) mother struggling with the grief and depression that comes as the aftermath of an abortion. This because her parents chose to kill their grandchild, and the courts backed them up, instead of protecting human life at every stage.
Do not talk to me about "the right to choose." The movement to keep abortion legal is about wanting to kill the most vulnerable among us.