A friend reminded me of some rather startling numbers that I would like to share with you. According to a 2002 report, one man was fined $2,500 for taking paddlefish eggs out of the state of Oklahoma. In addition to the fine, the individual could have spent 450 days in jail for smuggling the eggs.
Felony violations involving the destruction of various endangered species and their eggs, according to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act can amount to as much as $250,000 in fees for individuals and $500,000 for corporations and up to six months in prison.
A violation of the Eagle Act can result in a fine of up to $100,000 and imprisonment of up to one year. Penalties for subsequent offenses are significantly higher.
In all three of the examples provided, we are talking about laws that are on the books in our nation and are designed to protect the rights of wildlife including those belonging to endangered species. These are, I hasten to point out, not considered crimes against human beings, but rather crimes against various types of birds and animals.
Now compare these fines with those leveled against individuals who kill children who reside in the womb, in a Petri dish, or are newly conceived and on their way to implanting themselves. Regardless of which category of preborn child you consider, there are no fines and there is no jail time to be served when one of them is killed.
If this doesn’t make sense to you, then we are on the same page. But the point I want to make in this regard is far more serious than merely the incongruity of our laws when it comes to protecting wildlife versus protecting innocent human beings. What we have in America right now is a legal system that places more value on a bird’s egg or a fish’s egg, than on a human being’s life. Because of this disconnect with logic and common sense, very bad things happen, and they are happening in our communities on a daily basis.
Take the case of the child found in a dumpster in Las Vegas on Wednesday of this week. “Investigators think the child was between the age of 18 months and [two] years old. The coroner says the baby's death is the result of a homicide.” In other words, this child was brutally murdered by someone. At this time, “Detectives want to question 20-year-old Darrean Williams and 37-year-old William Marshall. Police believe Williams is the mother of the child and Marshall is her boyfriend.”
Consider the case of the five Arizona police officers who are currently on paid leave because a criminal probe is being conducted following the flushing of a preborn child down a toilet. Yes, that’s right.
Four officers responded to a call of a possible miscarriage Monday at the Motel 6 in Mesa where they arrested a man on suspicion of drug-related offenses and discovered a woman in the room apparently had miscarried a [four]-inch fetus that was an estimated 12 to 14 weeks old, according to [Police Chief] Gascón.
Although both Mesa fire and police were present in the motel room, Lt. Lynn Young told the officers and fire personnel over the phone not to take the fetus but to flush it down the toilet, according to Gascón.
Since this child was, according to our laws, not considered to be a full-fledged person, will the policemen go on about their daily lives as if nothing had happened? Will any charges be recommended in this case? Nobody knows at this point. The question in my mind is whether or not the public will want to know what would have possessed anyone to tell the officers to flush a preborn human being down the toilet rather than give him a proper burial. My guess is nobody will care!
Finally there’s the case of Arnold Ross, a Louisiana teen charged with rape and the murder of an infant. The report explains that Ross is suspected of having raped the eight-month-old baby boy Da-Von Lonzo and then beating the baby to death. The investigation in this case is ongoing, but as Mary Ann Kreitzer, founder of Les Femmes – The Truth, so aptly observed in her blog when she wrote about this tragic case:
The comments following the story express horror over what happened to this poor little baby. But I imagine some of the same individuals calling for the blood of the killer would describe themselves as pro-choice and excuse a similar crime provided the baby was murdered nine months earlier at eight months in utero.
That's what George Tiller did every day: injected saline solution to scald babies and burn off their skin, stabbed them in the neck and sucked out their brains, thrust a needle full of digoxin into their hearts to stop its [sic] beating – his methods changed over the years, but all guaranteed delivery of a battered and dead baby. Yet Tiller is a hero to the pro-abortion mob while Ross, no doubt, they would consider a monster. Tiller didn't rape the babies; he performed a mechanical rape on their mothers using sterile instruments to violate the sanctuary of the uterus. But he, we are told, was a brave man wielding his murderous instruments against the little ones. He was eulogized at his funeral as a "passionate and generous man who repeatedly overcame difficult challenges." A friend described him as "Mr. Enthusiasm," which was certainly true of his attitude toward killing children.
Well, Mr. Enthusiasm, meet your philosophical twin, Arnold Ross, a young man raised in a culture that allows the dismembering of near term babies in utero. He never knew a time that pornography wasn't rampant, fornication wasn't encouraged, and child killing wasn't legal. He grew up in an age where liberal policies destroyed the black family driving fathers from the home, encouraging mothers to replace them with Uncle Sugar and his welfare checks.
How can anyone be surprised when the young treat life as cheap and expendable? They've learned the lessons of the culture too well, perhaps. One can do whatever he likes and eliminate the consequences. The young find out too late that some killing is more equal than others.
There's precious little difference between little Da-Von Lonzo and the babies killed at Tiller's abortuary – about ten pounds, in fact. But Tiller performed respectable murders that left him awash in money that he shared with liberal politicians. His politically correct killing filled Kathleen Sebelius' campaign chest and those of other liberal politicians. As the Bible says, "Love of money is the root of all evils" and it can buy a lot of approval from those who lust after it.
As for me, I can't see much difference between George Tiller, mass child killer, and Arnold Ross, killer of one. They were philosophical twins. The pro-abortion "martyr" and the child abusing "monster" had more in common than our society is likely to admit.
Kreitzer has hit the nail on the head. And while, at this moment, we do not know what sort of sentence will be handed down in the case involving 17-year-old Arnold Ross, we do know that Da-Von is dead.
And we also know that whether it is the Ross case, or the Mesa Arizona police case or the Las Vegas dumpster case, the bottom line is that we are living in a culture of violence. For more than 36 years, America has denied that aborting a child prior to birth is the moral equivalent of murder; in fact many have glorified abortion as a human right and charged those who know otherwise with disrespectful, dishonest allegations such as fanaticism, terrorism and anti-feminism. But the results of this disconnect between the price one has to pay for stealing a duck egg and the price one has to pay for killing a preborn child are all around us.
It’s time America woke up and saw the brutality that is spawned on a daily basis by America’s violent culture; a culture dedicated to denial, betrayal and sexual saturation. We are paying the price daily in human lives tossed on the trash heap of our inability to face reality.
How many more will have to die?