Introduction

Infanticide is the direct killing - by action or neglect - of a newborn baby. It is usually committed when the child has some mental or physical challenge. Infanticide is a direct result of abortion-on-demand's cheapening of human life.

As C. Everett Koop, M.D., former US Surgeon General, has written, "What started off to be a woman's right to abortion-on-demand has become a woman's right to a dead baby. Inasmuch as a woman has a right to a dead baby, does she not have the right to a dead baby outside the womb as well as inside the womb? Apparently she does! Medical journals published in the U.S. carry clear indication that doctors are practicing infanticide, in reality homicide, and yet the law has apparently turned its back."

The practice of infanticide stems from strictly utilitarian criteria whereby the value of a human being is judged by that person's "usefulness" to society as a whole. Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer, for example, argues that parents should have the option to kill disabled or unhealthy newborns for "a period of 28 days after birth." According to Singer, "killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all."

So goes the logic of the pro-abortion mantra "every child a wanted child." Children in a culture of abortion-on-demand have become commodities to be embraced or discarded (inside or outside the mother's womb) at the will of more powerful parties. Ohio Right to Life affirms that every child, no matter what degree of disability or dependency, possesses intrinsic dignity and worth and thus deserves to be welcomed into the world and protected by law.

Questions and Answers
Question 4: Is the care of disabled persons worth the cost?
Answer: Professor Jerome LeJeune, discoverer of the chromosonal pattern of Down's syndrome once related a story he had heard from a geneticist colleague which illustrates that persons with disabilities can contribute as much (if not more) to a healthy society as any other individual:

"Many years ago, my father was a Jewish physician in Braunau, Austria. On one particular day, two babies had been delivered by one of his colleagues. One was a fine, healthy boy with a strong cry. His parents were extremely proud and happy. The other was a little girl, but her parents were extremely sad, for she was a mongoloid. I followed them both for almost 50 years. The girl grew up, living at home, and was finally destined to be the one who nursed her mother through a very long and lingering illness after a stroke. I do not remember her name. I do, however, remeber the boy's name. He died in a bunker in Berlin. His name was Adolph Hitler."