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Last week, Massachusetts joined 10 other U.S. jurisdictions in passing a bill that legalized abortion up to birth. Their new law gives physicians unlimited freedom to kill prenatal human beings — good news for “healthcare” providers such as Dr. Warren Hern, who have made it clear that they are happy to do such late-term abortions for virtually any reason at all.
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Indeed, in a recent interview, Hern was asked directly if he ever does second- and third-trimester abortions on women who have no medical condition and simply “don’t want the baby” or “changed their mind.”
“It happens all the time,” he said.
Those shocked by the reality of such practices may rightly wonder what separates this kind of abortion from infanticide. Plenty of babies killed via these kinds of late abortions are more developed than babies delivered just a few weeks prematurely in the NICU.
As U.S. institutions continue to adopt various forms of neo-pagan ethics, with the assumptions of Christian ethics marginalized, it is unsurprising that we are seeing a return to practices of abortion that are morally indistinguishable from infanticide. And even straight-up, no-chaser infanticide itself.
In the ancient world of pagan Greece and Rome, there was no moral distinction between abortion and infanticide. Both were seen as forms of birth control, especially when it came to controlling the births of the poor and/or when the child was disabled. It wasn’t until Christianity came on the scene that such practices were challenged — and, for Christians too, there was no distinction made between abortion and infanticide. Both were prohibited by the early Catholic Church as forms of terrible violence directed at unimaginably vulnerable human beings.
Take, for example, the case of “baby Gabriel.” He was the techno-project of a California couple who hired McKenna West to be his surrogate mother. But when that project turned out to be less optimized than the couple had hoped — at 20 weeks’ gestation, they discovered that Gabriel had a treatable heart condition that required significant surgery — they told West that she must kill the child. But she refused and relocated to Texas, a jurisdiction that protects children such as Gabriel and has excellent outcomes when treating his condition.
But here’s a very important fact with which our culture needs to come to terms: Even after Gabriel was born, his parents could still try to ensure his death.
In not a few cases, parents aim at the death of children after birth for exactly the same reasons many aim at their deaths before birth. Indeed, the Texas attorney general’s office, in its court filing, said that “the intended parents have stated they will refuse consent” to the medically indicated treatment and “they may seek to move the child to California so that treatment can be withheld there.” The Texas judge, in agreeing that the baby needed legal protection after birth, wrote: “The evidence before the Court raises substantial question whether medically indicated, life-sustaining treatment will be provided to the child upon birth, and whether the child may be removed from this State before that question can be heard.”
There will be more legal hearings and decisions, but it is now clear that there are federal issues of civil rights involved in the case as well. The Department of Health and Human Services, led by its civil rights office, has warned Texas hospitals that federal law protecting disabled people prohibits withholding indicated medical treatment based on their disability.
According to Fox News Digital reporting, this includes “judgments that the life of someone with a disability has less value or that the individual would impose a burden on others.” Federal protections for disabled people, according to HHS, “extend to decisions involving life-sustaining treatment.”
Note that it required a state attorney general, a federal civil rights watchdog, and a national news cycle to ensure that a baby with a treatable heart condition, who was already marked for death by his parents, received standard medical care.
Again, it may seem shocking, but we must now face the fact that our “healthcare” system allows parents to aim at the death of their children after birth for exactly the same reasons they do so before birth.
Take the example recounted by Cherry Paul, who was told by her medical team that her prenatal son, Jesse, had spina bifida and would have “no quality of life.” They put intense pressure on her to get an abortion, but when Paul refused, she was then told they could wait until Jesse was born and if “his disability was too severe,” they could choose to “withhold treatment and let him die naturally.” Happily, the infanticide offer was also refused, and Jesse now enjoys doing things such as fishing with his brother.
I have a book coming out in January 2027 that details just how routine this kind of infanticide has become. Some readers may remember the infamous interview in which then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a former pediatric neurologist, was asked what happens in these situations. His ominous yet confident answer was that “the infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
This was apparently so common that Northam was taken aback by the massive backlash to his remarks. A window into the culture he inhabited was revealed in an article in the Journal of Perinatology, which indicated that some physicians responsible for the care of newborns understand the decision to offer medical care to an older infant or child as saving someone with a disability, but for a younger infant, they consider offering medical care as creating someone with a disability.
This, simply put, is the pagan vision of the human person on full display. Infanticide is back — approved, even encouraged, by expert medical practitioners.
Beyond enforcement of federal civil rights law in infanticide cases, as huge as that would be, there is more that can and should be done. Similar protection of disabled populations should apply in abortion cases as well. Protection of such vulnerable children should be a priority, whether they are at risk from NICU doctors withholding treatment or from abortion providers such as Hern.
We should also protect surrogate mothers such as West — both from attempts to force her to kill the child inside her and from unjust laws that make her unable to care for children such as Gabriel when the techno-parents prove violent in their intentions. It is outrageous that a restraining order means that West cannot see the child she carried and protected. It should go without saying that parents who mark their child for death should not be given priority when it comes to custody of the child after birth.
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Finally, we should acknowledge the massive costs often associated with kinds of medical treatments that baby Gabriel needs — and appropriate care for disabled children more broadly. Emperor Constantine was not always a paragon of respect for human dignity, but in at least partially implementing an early Christian understanding of the human person, he not only made infanticide illegal, but designated money from the Roman imperial treasury to go to families and others to help them care for babies who would have otherwise been at risk for abortion or infanticide.
We should learn from that example. The cost of a child’s treatment and care, of course, doesn’t justify aiming at his death. But there is no reason to choose between protecting disabled prenatal and neonatal children from violence and making sure that their families or other institutions have the resources to make sure their medical and other needs are met. Both are requirements of human dignity.
