Lindsay Clancy is a woman facing multiple murder charges in Massachusetts, one of which is for the premeditated killing of her 8-month-old baby. It’s a tragic story involving mental illness and the drugs intended to treat it. But had Clancy retained an abortionist to kill her son eight months earlier, just before he was born, no crime would have been committed under the commonwealth’s new abortion-up-to-birth law.
Gov. Maura Healey signed the legislation in a ceremony in which she was surrounded by a large group of cheering and applauding women (and a few men), including doctors, state legislators and abortion lobbyists.
I’m sure the governor and her allies are pleased with themselves. They imagine themselves enlightened and progressive, believing that by legalizing elective abortion up to birth they have struck a blow for social justice and “reproductive rights.”
This is how genuine evil operates. It masquerades, presenting itself as the opposite of what it is. It draws us into a mental universe in which good and bad, right and wrong, justice and injustice are inverted. So, instead of experiencing guilt in our evildoing, we experience self-righteousness. Instead of feeling shame, we feel pride. We may even tell ourselves that we are worshipping God and striving to do God’s will — Healey says that her Catholic faith powers her commitment to “social justice.” In truth, we are bowing before Moloch and — in this case, literally — feeding our infants into his maw.
Blinded by ideological zeal, the abortion-rights movement now supports and defends killing that is indistinguishable from infanticide. Healey and her supporters have backed themselves into the view that though killing a 24-week-old preemie weighing 22 ounces is murder, killing a one-week overdue 41-week-old child weighing 10 pounds 5 ounces just before birth is perfectly acceptable — indeed, a protected right. All that is required is that a physician sign off on the abortion.
Defenders of the Massachusetts law claim that these late-term procedures are uncommon and only happen for the preservation of the mother’s life and health. Many people would like to believe them. But it isn’t true.
Journalist Emma Camp supports abortion without restrictions in the first trimester of pregnancy. She draws the line, however, at late-term abortions. Writing in The Atlantic two years ago, Camp let the cat out of the bag about the fact that elective abortions of viable babies are indeed happening in America. In 2023, there were 137 third-trimester abortions recorded in the state of Colorado alone. What’s more, the article links to a clinic in Bethesda, Maryland, that openly advertises performing abortions up to 35 weeks’ gestation.
The late-term abortion defender Dr. Warren Hern revealed the dirty truth in an interview conducted by the famous atheist and skeptic Michael Shermer:
Shermer: “Do you ever get any women in their second half of the second trimester or in the third trimester that say they have no medical problems — they just don’t want the baby, or changed their mind? Would you do it?”
Hern: “Of course. If the woman doesn’t want to be pregnant, there’s no justification for forcing her to continue the pregnancy.”
Shermer: “Has that happened?”
Hern: “It happens all the time.”
One would hope that mainstream Democrats around the country would recognize the Massachusetts law as an extreme overstep and rush to condemn it. Yet the silence is deafening. Surely there are some who see that there is no justification for killing fully viable children in utero that doesn’t equally justify killing infants moments after they’ve been born. Are they for infanticide, too?
Some Democrats have been willing to challenge their party’s hard left, speaking out against socialism, antisemitism, defunding the police, abolishing prisons and other extreme measures. But is opposing the moral equivalent of infanticide a bridge too far in today’s Democratic Party? I hope not.
I call on Democratic leaders who have not embraced abortion fanaticism to break their silence. Please speak out against this barbaric law.
Despite intense pressure, nine Democratic state legislators in Massachusetts stood up to evil and joined the Republicans in voting against the bill. Rep. Jeffrey Turco rightly described it as “extremist” and “barbaric.” Let’s watch and see who is praised by party leaders and the media: Healey or the nine representatives?
I have a plea for supporters of the law, too. Please be honest with the American people. To its credit, the Guttmacher Institute, once an arm of Planned Parenthood, candidly acknowledges that there are more than 10,000 late-term abortions performed every year, and that most of these are not (as is often claimed) to preserve maternal life or because of fetal deformity. They are elective — or as it is euphemistically put, “social indication” — abortions.
Truth be told, I have less of a problem with honest supporters of the law than I have with its silent opponents. Fanatics, having blinded themselves to evil, even confusing it with good, are in a certain way less blameworthy than those who see evil, but choose the path of indifference. In the words of the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself.”