From the Editor | Inconvenient Babies

In the Christmas edition of The Maronite Voice, I wrote about babies in church. This is another reflection about babies...inconvenient babies.

Matthew 2:6 — When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

January 1, 2019, Philadelphia, PA — A 15-year-old mother is facing charges after her newborn son was found in a dumpster and later died. A woman discovered the baby after a friend of the teen told her what happened.

History demonstrates that societies have had no qualms in killing babies who have been inconvenient for political, financial or personal reasons. Two thousand years ago, Herod killed the male babies in the vicinity of Bethlehem out of fear that one of them might challenge his right to the throne. This year in Philadelphia, the pathetic teenager who tossed her newborn son in a dumpster was probably desperate and committed an act that is beyond belief, so shocking that it made the news.

On January 18, thousands converged on Washington in the March for Life to protest the Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade. On January 22, the State of New York passed a new law expanding the possibilities for abortion. Now, almost any licensed health care practitioner can conduct abortions within 24 weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, or later if there is an “absence of fetal viability,” or if the practitioner considers the abortion “necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.”

The young mother who tossed her newborn son in a dumpster could have gone to an abortion clinic in September 2018 and achieved the same result of killing the baby. She would have faced no criminal charges because abortion was only a health care issue and perfectly legal. Sadly, her actions would have raised few eyebrows. Three months later, after that baby passed through the birth canal, her actions are deemed murder and she faces criminal charges.

“In God We Trust” is still on the currency, but this is how America treats babies we don’t want — the inconvenient ones.

Chorbishop John D. Faris