Baby in the toilet

Is the value of the life of the newborn the next step down the slippery slope? That is what today's National Post editorial seems to be suggesting. (Born unto Walmart)

The fact that this woman chose a Walmart toilet cubicle as a birthing room is rather symbolic itself - discarding unwanted 'solid waste' in a store that sells a high volume of low-priced goods in a throw-away society. Gee, I wonder if she picked up some discount toilet paper on the way out.

(Kudos, BTW to the Walmart manager that saved the baby's life!)

As I was discussing yesterday, George Jonas reminds us of how we tend to overvalue a woman's right to self-fulfillment at the expense of new life:

Living in an epoch that is selfish as well as matriarchal, of all the styles that we shield from being cramped, we put women's style first. We invent euphemisms, such as "choice" for killing, and sophomoric dilemmas, such as pretending not to know when life begins, to ensure that nothing hinders Virginia's quest for Santa Claus. No obstacle must interfere with her goal of self-fulfillment -- least of all an issue (as it were) of her healthy sexual appetite. There's plenty of babies where this one came from, eh, Ginny? And if not, we can always import some from Somalia.

What the writer of the Post editorial seems to be railing about, and with which I agree, is that society is far too compassionate or lenient towards the type of woman who commits this horrible act. Leaving a newborn face down in Walmart toilet is far different from ringing a doorbell and leaving the baby on someone's front porch.

But here's the paragraph that bothered me:

We have never subjected them to the same treatment as murderers. But we have never treated the drowning of infants as acceptable, either. One hopes, not so much for the sake of future babies as for ourselves, that this will not change. We have, by and large, learned to reluctantly accept a legal philosophy that endows an infant with the full human package of moral claims and entitlements to protection only at birth, and no sooner. Is the line to be pushed forward still further in the name of compassion for reckless mothers?

Who is "we"? The royal "we"? The editorial board "we"? Or are they suggesting that "we as a society" have learned to accept that an infant is only a person once they leave their mothers' body?

Because that, I will never accept.

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Important Update: Sask. 'washroom birth' mother steps forward.

Monday Update: Alleged Mother of Walmart Baby Free while Crown Weighs Case.