We were pleased to learn that last Tuesday the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) handed down a ruling which reaffirmed that the murder of an unborn baby in its mother’s womb is homicide in Massachusetts. In Commonwealth v. Ronchi, the defendant had been convicted for the murders of both his girlfriend and their unborn baby after he stabbed his girlfriend to death. The baby subsequently died from lack of maternal blood flow. The defendant argued that since he had not actually stabbed the baby, he should not be held responsible for its death. The SJC rejected this argument, holding that “infliction of prenatal injuries resulting in the death of a viable fetus, before or after it is born, is homicide.”
The Court’s holding that unborn children are persons deserving of protection from violence is not a novel one; it is supported by decades-old Massachusetts court precedents. Yet it raises an obvious question: why isn’t the same principle true in cases of abortion? Whether a baby dies by an assailant’s knife or an abortionist’s scalpel, shouldn’t we regard both acts as heinous crimes against innocent and vulnerable human beings? As Massachusetts Citizens for Life’s president, Myrna Maloney Flynn, stated in MCFL’s press release on this case, the ruling exposes “the glaringly egregious and ongoing double standard that our legal system and media continue to ignore” when it comes to abortion.
We live in a culture unmoored from logic and reason. The underlying worldview of the pro-abortion movement is one of radical individualism, no matter what the cost to others. The value of preborn human life is now determined by whether the mother wants her baby. Killing a wanted baby is murder; killing an unwanted baby is a ‘human right.’ Women “shout their abortions,” shamelessly promoting feticide as a form of liberation. We have substituted subjective feelings for objective truth, and children have suffered for it.
So, while we applaud the SJC’s decision, we know it also serves to highlight the hypocrisy of our culture’s attitudes toward preborn life. As Christians, we know that all human beings, no matter how small, are valuable because they are made in the image of the God who created them. All children deserve to be free from violence, and MFI will always fight for that truth.
If you’ve wondered how we arrived at this current, disorienting state of affairs where truth can so easily be trumped by ideology, or asked how the church should respond, our MFI Book Club is just for you!
The event is on March 1st with Carl Trueman, author of Strange New World, How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution. Learn how we arrived to this point and how to survive the chaos of our cultural crisis. Register to join us here.