The Rise of Infanticide?

A spate of murdered babies has shocked Germany in recent weeks. The Times [London] reports that at least 23 babies have been killed this year, “many of them beaten to death or strangled by their mothers before being dumped on wasteland and in dustbins.” German officials believe the total number of babies killed this year to be even higher than what has been reported.

More:

Police investigating the murders are at a loss to explain the sudden surge in such cases, which have involved mothers of all ages all over the country.

Now city councils have launched an advertising campaign to highlight the problem and to promote greater use of the Baby-Klappe hatches that allow women to drop off their babies to be found and cared for without having to give their names. Posters were being put up in cities and towns across Germany yesterday, urging women to make use of the Baby-Klappe, with the slogan “Before babies land in the rubbish bin . . .”

The campaign has already attracted criticism from senior clergymen and from charities, including Caritas, who argue that it could actively encourage mothers to dump their children. But there is agreement that something must be done to address what appears to be an infanticide epidemic.

One criminologist suggested that these mothers are murdering their babies because they seek to save a relationship with the father. Whatever the motivation, these women are committing the homicide of their own infants. The German government’s idea of “drop-off points” is an effort to save at last some babies in the future. According to press reports, there are now more than 90 drop-off points in Germany. Six babies have been pushed through a slot in just one Berlin center since 2003.

The rise of infanticide is shocking, but hardly surprising. After all, in many societies these babies could be safely aborted almost up to the time of their delivery. The logic of infanticide is just the logic of abortion pushed beyond the moment of birth.

The fact that Germans have responded with outrage over this spate of infanticides is comforting in one sense, but it also reveals the hypocrisy of the age. How can infanticide be wrong and abortion be a basic right? Both mean the killing of a baby, and both represent the Culture of Death at its most deadly.

Meanwhile, British authorities are considering a proposal to allow nurses to carry out abortions without a physician present.  As The Telegraph [London] reports:

Dr Kate Guthrie, a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: “This is logical. As long as standards of care are high and as long as there is adequate training, competent clinical staff should carry out early surgical abortions and it does not matter if it is a doctor or a nurse.”

But Anthony Ozimic, of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said: “Do nurses really want to perform abortions, the killing of innocent human beings?

“The pro-abortion lobby claims that so-called safe, legal abortion was necessary to safeguard women’s health yet, having achieved legal abortion, it now wants to remove safeguards by getting nurses to do doctors’ dirty work for them.”

The effect of this proposal would be to make abortion even more readily available — radically enlarging the number of persons deemed qualified to perform the procedure.

The Culture of Death advances with developments like these.  The twenty-first century is looking scarier all the time.