Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Religious Freedom and Baby Killing

Came across a story today in the Washington Post--a sad tale of a woman with a highly treatable form of leukemia refusing transfusions and dying, taking her almost 8 months-gestation fetus with her. The reason?

Can you guess?

That's right--Jehovah's Witness.

She was offered the opportunity to save this fetus via c-section, which would have made chemo possible for her.  For pregnant women who follow this course of treatment, there is an 83% remission rate.

She refused.  Because c-sections for women in her position also necessitate blood transfusions.

Think on this.  This woman was so deluded, so completely enthralled by mythology that she allowed herself and her child to die.  Her whole hoped-for future gone because she couldn't see past the ridiculous fairy tale she'd been hammered down with.

That's "freedom of religion" for you.  But the end result?

Dead baby-to-be.

Where is the screaming?  This happened in 2009, but it's just now getting attention.  Where is the outrage?  Where is the freaky "right-to-life" crowd?  I'll tell you where they are--they're hiding, because they have no answer here.  Because they believe their right to religious freedom entitles them to crawl into people's lives, their faces, and bully, insult, and threaten.  If they challenge HER religious right to kill that baby, they also challenge their own religious right to be overbearing douchebags who do all they can to legislate their ridiculous mythology.

And while we're at it, where is the "sentence the junkie whore to life in prison because she used drugs while pregnant" crowd?  Often the same crowd, yes, but sometimes not.  Where are they?  The folks so quick to hate and condemn and threaten women in the throes of addiction?  Why aren't they shouting?  I see a whole bunch of "Oh, what a sad thing" and "Gosh, what a terrible situation for her to be trapped in."  But I'm seeing a serious dearth of "crazy, stupid woman killed herself and and her baby" shouting.

So is it about LIFE, or is it about people toeing a particular line, regardless of whether or not that fetal form is preserved and brought to fruition?   My money is on the latter.  Because if "a life is a life," that applies to ALL, even the convicted killers, even the rapists, even the drug dealers, and even the hungry children of the aforementioned "junkie whores".

And yes--even the fetuses at eight months gestation who could easily have survived a c-section, had the woman carrying it not been a religious nutbag.

And before anyone gets wadded up, I am absolutely pro-choice.  My issue here is the sick hold religion has on people and the hypocritical way the "lifer" crowd is looking the other way rather than using their formidable collective whinging to decry the "murder" of this "baby" by its mother.