The 28,000 Babies That Die in the Seventh Trimester

No clue.
But it has seemed to me that the people who focus the most on pro life issues, often seem to utter in their next breath, anti welfare statements.

It seems that to be truly pro life, one would be for then taking the best care of that life throughout it's span, no matter where the payment of that care is coming from.

I wonder how many of those 28,000 babies that die in their first year of life outside the womb could have been saved if they had proper post-natal care/well-baby care?

Why is our infant mortality rate so much higher than other industrialized nations? Is it that our pro-life advocates believe that the right to life ends once you are born?

Steven,

I do appreciate your concern for those that live and die a tragic life due to lack of medical care, education, diet, and / or financial means. And, yes - we should address.

Please, don't diminish the slaughter that happens each year because we have abortion on demand, for any reason, no questions asked. Killing the innocent is just as bad as turning a blind eye.

We should work to end all innocent death...

Please read this Slate post:

The baby gap: the surprising truth about America's infant-mortality rate.

http://www.slate.com/id/2161899/

"Comparing infant mortality rates between countries is fraught with uncertainty—after all, it's hard to argue that every country's figures are reliable. But it's still worth asking what more we can do to stop babies from dying. Defined as death before one year of age, infant mortality frequently gets framed in the United States as a problem of insufficient health-care funding. In December, for example, a New York Times column blamed it on the lack of a single-payer health insurer. However, a closer look reveals the counterintuitive possibility that high infant mortality in the United States might be the unintended side effect of increased spending on medical care."

It's very informative, about a complicated problem.

A question for those here who oppose late term abortions. Do you feel that the woman who consents to a late term abortion should be prosecuted for murder?

Your article suggests that the abortion is okay because more children die in their first year so why not let them die anyway. Their parents won't take care of them so let them die. There are programs in this country for these children you are talking about. WIC, Medicaid are two that come directly to mind. Michigan has child health insurance for poor familes for $5.00 a month. That is returnable bottle money. I believe most late term abortions are done by parents who are told something is wrong with their child, i.e. Downs Syndrome. Think for a minute, how many young Downs Syndrome children do you see anymore. I realized this after I read an article about a nurse who cradled a baby that was left to die by the abortion doctor who was a downs syndrome child. This is what Hitler did in Nazi Germany. Are we doing the same?

Mr. Waldmen, you asked why we "ignore" these other children. It would be much more enlightening if, instead of looking at the numbers you quoted, you plotted the infant mortality rate along with the abortion rate, over the last 100 years in this country.

Why is is ok for the government to train 18 year olds in the military to "kill" but not ok to stop the growth of an unborn human? The unborn human is a part of the woman's body and is her decision whether or not to continue its growth. She holds its life in her body and it is she that decides and knows best what is right for her and her potential child.

I was told by an Iraq army veteran that the first thing he was told in basic training was "like it or not, your job is to kill."

Back in the 1960s I worked with many children who had been born with disabilities due to failed do-it-yourself abortions by desperate mothers who had preferred trying drugs instead of coat hangers to end their pregnancies. Many of those mothers believed abortions were wrong, but felt they had no other choice. If abortions are made illegal again in a society where many people believe they're not immoral we'll have thousands, if not millions, of babies born with disabilities. We need to be prepared to deal with them. I believe unborn babies are humans and killing them is wrong, but we need to find ways to cut down on the unwanted pregnancies instead of just changing that law.

I've personally known mothers who killed their unborn babies out of compassion rather than have them endure horrible lives in the foster care system, while infertile couples who longed to adopt were turned down repeatedly because they weren't rich or didn't fit the ideal of perfect parents. Those things can be fixed. Other mothers may think death is preferable to life with a hereditary disease. Maybe anti-abortion laws are more likely to be accepted if exceptions are made for cases when it's not just a convenience for people who were too irresponsible to use birth control.

I hate to be a stickler, but there' no such thing as a "7th TRImester", "tri-" being the operative prefix for things that happen in, um, THREE's!

Shurely the "7th month" is what was meant?

Meanwhile, let's all hope America does not devolve into a State that tells women, 'You MUST have this baby!' Talk about intrusion into people's private lives. UGH!

I worked in an abortion clinic for two years and I am still amazed at the notion of "irresponsible". Almost all of the unintended pregnancies were due to unavailability of birth control, birth control failure or using birth control methods incorrectly due to ignorance. I recall one woman who had high blood pressure and was unable to use hormone based methods. Her spouse refused condoms as a form of power and control over her. Teenage girls often said that they took one of moms pills, why didn't it work? The stereotypical woman who was just lazy or uses abortion as birth control is a rarity,a myth,a political ploy. What is needed is easier access to birth control, affordability and education.

Abortion is a dividing issue. But the fact is, more people (54% in fact) are pro choice. You can ban abortion all you want to but it won't stop it. In fact, in south america where abortion is banned or severly restricted, their rates are as high as any where it is legal.(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/03/international/americas/03abortion.html)
Does everyone really want to see a repeat of Caucescu's Romania? You want to reduce abortion rates? Educate at an early age and continue to do so through out a childs life and offer affordable and easy access to birth control cause telling people to keep their legs closed or their pants zipped doesn't seem to be working.

Excellent post. I'm starting to think there is some kind of neurological basis to being the kind of pro-life person who can't look beyond birth. What makes a person so vehemently opposed to the idea that each life deserves protection both before AND far beyond birth? Why do they so tenaciously contend that abortion always and in every situation trumps any other threat to life -- even when faced with statistics like this? They come across looking as though they just don't give a rip that kids die of hunger every day, that our infant mortality rate is atrocious, that our health care system has TRULY created a "culture of death" now, in that it selects who gets to live (the insured) and who gets to die (the uninsured) in the typical emergency room. I'm pro-life. Not just pro-birth. But I feel like my perspective of being pro-life is so completely different than the folks who run Right to Life and other conservative, knee-jerk anti-abortion groups. What is it that makes our brains work so differently on this issue? We are working with the same set of facts: Abortion is horrible because it results in the taking of innocent life. So does war that kills civilians, poverty, domestic violence and unequal access to health care. Why is it so inconceivable (no pun intended) to these people that a person could be just as concerned about those life issues as about abortion? Why do they argue so strongly that there is no proportion between them? It's as though their cognitive processes are SO fixed on an image of a fetus in utero that they literally can't see beyond it. How will we ever work together on an issue like this when our perceptions of "protecting life" are, at the most basic level, so different?

For Pete's sake, get a copy editor on staff.

Steven Waldman

To the post by Appalachian prof, I give a hearty “Amen.” More to your point about the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ web site being silent on your artificial dichotomy. The bishops simply do not traffic in artificial dichotomies. In legitimate dichotomies, they simply do not write position papers or instructions to the faithful on any two legitimate issues juxtaposed with one another.

The work of a conscientious Catholic is to not only read and synthesize the Scriptures and Catechism of the Church, but the many instructions given on matters of social justice at every level of Church Teaching. The late Pope John Paul The Great spoke unceasingly of matters pertaining to every dimension of social justice in his Encyclicals, Address to Te United Nations, homilies in Rome and around the world, etc. Pope Benedict XVI has similarly done so as Cardinal Ratzinger, and now as Pope. They are but two recent examples. There are many more at the level of Bishop’s Conferences.

You say, “We can argue whether there's a moral difference between a seven month fetus dying because of a mother's decision and an infant sentenced to death in her first year because of bad prenatal care, but I suspect it's a distinction that would not be meaningful to the dead baby.”

Forgive me, but I have come to expect better of you. There is simply no similarity to argue here. It is the worst dichotomy I’ve seen on the topic. There is all the moral difference in the world between a mother who procures a late term abortion and one who through ignorance, poverty, poor self-esteem, mental illness, etc… fails to secure adequate prenatal care. I worked for seven years with unwed mothers in Times Square before becoming a scientist. Many arrived at our shelter eight and nine months pregnant without ever having seen a doctor, unaware of the most rudimentary knowledge of their own bodies.

In Catholic moral theology, we maintain that in order for an act to be considered sinful:

1. There must be serious matter involved.
2. The person must give sufficient reflection.
3. The person must give full consent of the will.

So, yes, there is a difference between neglect born of ignorance and a volitional act to murder a child. The baby is just as dead, but such moral equivalence imputes to the mother who did not know any better the same degree of culpability as the one who with sufficient reflection and full consent of the will procures a late term abortion.

You also say, “I mean this as no diminution to the abortion issue but more babies' lives could be saved through a concerted effort on infant mortality -- largely through better prenatal care among the poor -- than through a late term abortion ban.”

Again, this is a false dichotomy. The only relationship between the two is that they share a lack of social justice. A just and decent people can, and should, address these as separate issues, each according to its own merits-or demerits.

Break down the statistics by race to understand why USA has such high infant mortality rates.
I guarrenteed you the children who are dying are vast majority black and mexican.

Why is our infant mortality rate so higher than Singapore, Macau, Anguilla, Slovenia, Malta and Cuba?

I have always believed that the prolife religious viewpoint is pure hypocrisy because they always seem to believe in protecting life from conception to birth and not anytime thereafter. This kind of thing is part of the reason why.