A judge on Thursday refused to dismiss the five felony and three misdemeanor charges against Daniel Navarro, one of the two workers from a California slaughterhouse charged with abusive treatment of cows. In the weeks since a videotape exposing the mistreatment became public, Congress has held hearings demanding assurance that the strict laws governing animal protection are being enforced elsewhere.
To their credit, Americans do not tolerate cruelty to animals. The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act mandates that livestock must be stunned into unconsciousness prior to slaughter to ensure a painless death. Food Safety and Inspection Service policy says poultry processors must treat chickens “in such a manner as to minimize excitement, discomfort, and accidental injury.” Holding areas must be equipped with an adequate number of fans to ensure proper ventilation for the birds, and the chickens are supposed to be handled carefully so their legs and wings do not break.
The Animal Welfare Act protects creatures used for laboratory research, dictating conditions such as cage size and feeding schedules that “contribute to their health and comfort.” Treatment standards include veterinary care and the appropriate use of anesthetics, analgesics and tranquilizers to minimize the animals‚ distress.
All 50 states have laws governing the euthanasia of companion animals. Some, such as Virginia, do not permit the use of gas chambers; others mandate that the animal must be a certain age before it can be put to death.
Only one killing industry is allowed to operate with virtually no regulation: the abortion industry.
What does it say about us as a society that we have rules protecting the wings of doomed chickens, but allow unborn babies to be diced into pieces small enough to pass through a suction tube? How can dogs be deemed too young for euthanasia, but unborn humans can be deprived of the chance to draw a single breath?
People who don’t want to face the fact that they would be outraged if kittens were treated with the same brutality afforded unborn humans rely on several methods to protect themselves from logical consistency. For starters, they insist on using the term “fetus” — as if saying “unborn baby” in Latin changes everything.
They also convince themselves the fetus cannot feel pain, although many physicians say the thalamus is sufficiently mature by 12 weeks gestation to respond to impulses from the sensory network. Dr. Laura Myers of Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital in Boston says that “touch and pain sensation are among the first functional entities to develop. By seven weeks gestation, nociceptors appear around the mouth.”
Almost everyone agrees that the baby feels pain by 20 to 23 weeks gestation. Why else would doctors administer anesthesia to babies operated on in utero?
Yet until 2002, when President Bush signed into law the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, babies who survived abortions were subjected to the inhumane treatment of being placed on shelves or pans to struggle for life until they died — often hours later. The bill passed the U.S. Senate 98-0, and Barack Obama claims he would have voted for it, had he been in the Senate at that time. But when a similar bill was introduced in the Illinois legislature while he was a state senator, Obama not only voted against it; his opposition reportedly was adamant.
How can Americans who refuse to buy tuna that wasn’t caught in dolphin-friendly nets or makeup that was tested on animals — whose cars brandish bumper stickers warning that they “Brake for Butterflies” and admonishing fellow drivers to “Practice Random Acts of Kindness” — elect as president a man who demonstrated no compassion for babies left alone to die?
Contrary to what presidential candidates like to pretend, an American president has limited control over such things as the national economy or the housing crisis. The president cannot set the price of oil in the Middle East or stop people from lying about their income to get mortgages they cannot afford. One of the few things fully within a president’s control is to be a spokesman for our national values. Given his extreme position on abortion, does Obama truly represent them?
He said he did not support the born-alive infants legislation in Illinois because he thought its language was too broad. Clearly, that was a graver concern to him than the prospect of infants placed on closet shelves and left to die.
And that should be a grave concern to anyone considering electing Obama as our next president.
