Uncommon Commentary #336: Boxer Rebellion

North Dakota has now banned the inducing of abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, on the basis that the foetus is by then able to feel pain. (Murder is, of course, wrong irrespective of whether the victim feels pain.  How would you react toward someone, who had intentionally killed with asphyxiation or with suffocation, justifying his crime on the basis that the person whom he killed did not suffer?)  The enacting of this legislation is a positive step, unless merely restricting and regulating the practice of foeticide fully satisfies anti-abortion sentiment.  After all, if human life is human throughout all nine months of its prenatal development, which science and reason both tell us that it is, then isn't it logical to defend it throughout those nine months?  Anyway, the North Dakota law isn't really so severe as its opponents would have people believe; human gestation lasts an average of 274 days, or 39 weeks and one day, and so foeticide even in the Peace Garden State will still be legal during the majority of a pregnancy.
I'll end this uncommon commentary by noting that when (only about a decade back) the US Senate was debating what would become the Born Alive Act (which compels hospitals to care for children who exit the womb safely despite attempts to abort them), Barbara Boxer spoke in favor of the bill; she noted correctly that it would confer no protection whatsoever on a child not yet born, and thus would not interfere with abortion "rights".  By contrast, a week or two before now, this same senatrix (female senator) actually said that a baby does not become a person until brought home from the hospital!  This reversal shows that, even if the public at large is indeed turning against induced abortion, the truculence of those who are still pro-"choice" may be growing worse.