One word summarizes the terrible disconnect between ethical standards, norms, and political perceptions in the story which will soon follow: disjunction.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines disjunction as a “disunion, separation.”
This word is not commonly used, especially in regular conversation, but its existence illustrates a sharp, almost contradictory, contrast. The example given in the dictionary is a “disjunction between theory and practice,” which is an apt illustration for what we see coming out of Iowa.
For there is indeed a great and sharp disconnect between how we view, punish, and perceive wanton infanticide in one case and the issue of late-term abortion in the other, which with the aid of a physician, can even be legally extended to what they call “post-birth abortion,” as argued in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
As reported by the Des Moines Register, 24-year-old Taylor Blaha of Iowa pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 50 years in prison after she drowned her infant daughter in a bathtub with the aid of her boyfriend before disposing of the body in the woods. The body has yet to be discovered.
WARNING: The following paragraphs contains graphic imagery some readers may find disturbing.
According to the New York Post, Blaha said baby Kayleen was born healthy at home on Nov. 16, 2022 and, at the time, Blaha was addicted to and using methamphetamine.
Kayleen began to cry, as babies do, and Blaha and her boyfriend, Brandon Thoma, became concerned that the cries would annoy their neighbors, leading them to call the police. As the new mother was on drugs, the couple was concerned if police became involved, the truth would come out and Department of Child Services would become involved, which would lead to them losing custody over their 2-year-old son.
Their solution: drown newborn Kayleen.
Does Taylor Blaha deserve more prison time?
Yes: 83% (10 Votes)
No: 17% (2 Votes)
Blaha reportedly cut a section of Kayleen’s umbilical cord before Thoma demonstrated how to hold Kayleen underwater “by pushing down on her chest.”
In an official court statement, Blaha described the drowning: “When I tried to take my hands off her, he would put my hands back on her and encourage me to keep going. She died as a result.”
The couple then “stuff[ed] her lifeless body into a backpack and discard[ed] it in a wooded area. The baby’s remains were never recovered,” the Post reported.
The horrid details of this story are enough to make the most callous stoic shudder.
Taylor K. Blaha sentenced for drowning newborn daughter https://t.co/EW7v7X5XDM
— MontanaMama (@406mama) August 22, 2023
When my eighth child, a son, died during childbirth, we begged God to give him breath, to bring him back to us, and wept bitterly holding our lifeless child in our arms. We would have done anything to hear his cries.
For this young woman to be given a living child by the goodness of God and to despise its cries, its breath, and its life to the point of smothering it out is especially horrifying to me, as it should be to anyone.
This young lady and her boyfriend already had a child. They had a future ahead of them, and whatever difficulties they had, struggling in the economically depressed mid-West, they were not so insurmountable as to necessitate or warrant the sacrifice of a human life. (I say this as a life-long child of the rust belt.)
The conversation regarding them is not that “they should have just had a doctor sign off on the child’s termination.” Rather, the overwhelming response is that they committed murder and rightly so.
And yet, we have a disjunction (that word again) here between what we know to be an act of murder in one case and a “medical procedure” in the other. We will send this woman to prison for what she did herself, but we let both the mothers and the physicians go free for committing what is essentially the same act? After all, abortion is less traumatic than adoption, right?
According to World Population Review, several states allow late term abortion. Hence if Taylor Blaha had killed baby Kayleen 24 hours before giving birth to her in the state of New Jersey with the help of a physician, she would not only be a free woman, but she would have been celebrated as a “strong independent woman.” Indeed, we see this all over the culture:
I’m not just pro-choice, I’m pro-abortion (really, have more), but there is this pervasive narrative on the left that people who oppose abortion only do it because they “hate women” and want to “control women’s bodies.” Is it true?https://t.co/y9TCzWiywa
— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) May 15, 2019
Have more! kill more! Lets celebrate women and their abortions!
We cannot operate a society where a woman who kills her child is a murderer while a woman who also kills her child is a hero.
That is, we cannot have a society that operates based on ethical contradictions.
We cannot have a disjunction.
