On Monday, a woman was found guilty of having an abortion. Her flatmates, who brought the crime to light and have been pilloried by pro-abortionists for their troubles have since spoken out about the trauma they suffered at witnessing the home abortion.
But so convinced is the pro-abortion lobby of its own moral superiority, that the chastisement of the mother in court for knowingly committing a crime has whipped them into a frenzy of self-righteousness and indignation.
The anonymous 21-year-old appeared at Belfast Crown Court, where she pleaded guilty to buying abortion pills over the internet and taking them to achieve an abortion two years ago, despite being fully aware that abortion is fully illegal in Northern Ireland.
Her crime came to light when her flatmates found the remains of her child, developed enough to be easily identified as a boy, discarded in a bin and called the police.
They have since been hounded by pro-abortionists, forcing them to speak out about the trauma they suffered as a result of witnessing the self-administered abortion, and finding the baby discarded in the trash. “It is something I can’t get out of my head,” one of them has told the Belfast Telegraph. “On bin collection day I couldn’t bring myself to put the bin out for collection. I didn’t want to throw a baby away. I didn’t know what to do.”
The flatmate, who had just suffered a miscarriage of her own, and who had offered to become legal guardian for the child, had to have counselling following the event.
For taking the life of her unborn son, the woman was handed a three month sentence suspended for two years. In other words, she walked free for committing a crime many would consider tantamount to murder.
The murder of a child post-birth is, rightly of course, perceived with horror and contempt. The brutal deaths of children such as Baby P and in Scotland, 11 week old Caleb Ness have even prompted the Scottish Government to introduce the borderline Orwellian ‘Named Person’ scheme, whereby every single child in the country is given a state guardian, regardless of the aptitude of their parents for parenting.
Yet the idea that a woman should have to appear in court for knowingly committing a crime is “horrifying”, from the era of “Queen Victoria” (code-word for puritanical) and “should have been long relegated to the annals of history,” according to the Independent – when that crime is taking her child’s life before birth.
Instead of sympathising with the child the paper sympathises with the mother, who wasn’t able to save up quickly enough to hop on a plane and have the procedure carried out in England. It quoted her lawyer, who said she felt “victimised by the system”.
And the paper uses the case to take a pop at presidential hopeful Donald Trump, who recently suggested – and then walked back from – the idea that a woman who went ahead with an illegal abortion should be punished for her act.
The reaction to his comments highlighted a major strand of hypocrisy running through western society. YouGov found the comment to be the most controversial thing Mr Trump had said during the contest for the Republican nomination so far.
But here’s the thing – what other criminal act do we not have a penalty for in law? Our whole system of justice is predicated on the idea that, if someone is found guilty of a crime, they must bear a commensurate punishment for their misdemeanour.
Of course, pro-abortionists argue that abortion should not be illegal in Northern Ireland in the first place. The Independent even goes so far as to argue that Westminster should ride rough-shod over democracy and impose the legalisation of abortion on Northern Ireland, regardless of local feeling.
And it insists that the ban in Northern Ireland is discriminatory, saying: “Regardless of Northern Ireland’s contested constitutional status, when it comes to human rights law we are just as much British citizens as women living in Blackpool or Birmingham.”
The argument is an ignorant one; women in the rest of the UK can also be jailed for doing the exact same thing as this girl did – buying abortion pills online and taking them.
Take the case of Natalie Towers, who was jailed last December for two and half years for doing just that. The only difference between her case and this girl’s is that her pregnancy was further along; her son was aborted at 32 weeks.
The Prosecutor in that case, Sarah Mallett told the court: “The paramedic was very shocked. What she saw there was a baby, head first in the toilet. She took such steps as she could to help the baby. She said he felt warm, pale, not blue. He was small but fully formed.”
But the universal criminality of abortion beyond 24 weeks in the UK is an argument unlikely to cut much mustard with pro-abortionists, who seem to want the right to abort all babies at any stage of pregnancy.
As Kerry Abel, of pro-choice group Abortion Rights, put it following Towers’ case: “In a case like this it is not sensible to criminalise the woman. I don’t think it should have gone to court … a baby is not a baby until it is born.”