I was cruising CNN.com when I can across this. I hadn't even ehard about this story until this moment. I'm shocked speechless, for one, that a mother could do this to her own child, and second, because she didn't get the death penalty. Although, I don't think it's being used as much as it used to. But then again her lawyers say someone else did it. http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/09/03/microwave.baby.ap/index.html
What's so outrageous about this? A mere thirty or forty days earlier, and she could have had this child seared to death with an injection of concentrated saline solution, or sliced 'n' diced by a cutting wire, or ripped to pieces by a powerful suction hose, by a man in a white coat, and it would have been as legal as the 4th of July.
Late-term abortions are extremely difficult to get, and only done in rare circumstances. As they should be. You can't just walk into an abortion clinic at 8 months and demand an abortion. And while I agree that it would be insane to say that a baby at 8 & 1/2 months is a person outside of the womb, and a few inches away, inside a woman, it's magically not a person by virtue of it's location in space...and while even though I am pro-choice, I don't like abortion, and when I became sexually active, it was with a girl I knew (because we discussed it first, among many other things) would carry a baby, planned or not, to term. That being said, I don't think that taking a dose of RU-486 or seeing a doctor at 2 months is the exact same thing as microwaving a live baby. Sorry. It's not. I think it's still kind of a tragedy. But it's not cold blooded murder of a sentient, sapient child.
I would definitely support restrictions on third-trimester abortions, if I wasn't worried it'd just be the first step to banning abortions outright. Abortions aren't protected in the constitution, you see.
^I mean, I am pretty sure at least that you just can't walk into an abortion clinic a 9 months and shout "My water just broke! Quick, scrape me!!!"
