What kind of dead babies do we care about, really?

Just tell us which dead babies we are supposed to get upset over

“Fatal Newborn Abandonments Skyrocket In Texas Following Abortion Ban” is a real headline that a real person actually wrote. You understand the all-out innuendo: Conservatives banned abortion in Texas, and so “fatal newborn abandonments” have skyrocketed as a direct result. I don’t think you need me to point out the shrieking fallacy in this implication, but it is worth underscoring that this is an increasingly common formulation in the culture. “Infants died at higher rates after abortion bans in the US, research shows,” CNN says. “Analysis Suggests 2021 Texas Abortion Ban Resulted in Increase in Infant Deaths in State,” a Johns Hopkins study declares. “Infant Deaths Higher in States Where Abortion is Banned,” says U.S. News and World Report. And so on.

It is quite plain to see what is happening here: Pro-abortion advocates are marking infant deaths that would have otherwise gone unmentioned as abortions; in effect they are doing a sort of crude double-counting, discovering that the babies normally killed by pills and forceps and saline and vacuums suddenly are worth talking about if they die outside of the uterus. If you kill a baby quietly in an outpatient clinic and dispose of the remains or the corpse in a biohazard bag and a supercan, that is evidently of no import. If the baby is birthed and subsequently dies, it is marked as an “infant death,” which, through some bewildering alchemy, makes it bad.

I just want to know which dead babies we’re supposed to mourn, and why. I say “we” essentially in the pluralis modestiae, because pro-lifers of course care about all of them, born and unborn alike, sick or healthy, dead or alive, and they don’t really need to ask questions like that. But for those who are sort of on the fence about dead babies—who may find themselves more ambivalent on the topic, and who may adjust their opinions about dead babies depending on the circumstances—the question seems more vital. We have been told for decades, after all, that babies in utero essentially exist in a sort of moral lacuna, outside of consideration, subordinate almost entirely to the whims and desires of the mothers carrying them. It has gotten so extreme that abortion supporters largely cannot even advocate restricting elective abortions at 40 weeks pregnancy; both Tim Walz and Kamala Harris had the chance to advocate that sensible position earlier this year and both refused to do so. The easiest slam-dunk question in the abortion portfolio and Democrats can’t even nail it: Dead babies are, I am afraid, just too indispensable.

So I might be forgiven for being skeptical about this sudden newfound concern for babies. Call me crazy. But the media and the academic class could be called upon to articulate it just a little better. Are “infant deaths” of real, genuine concern? Do infants deserve to be included in our sphere of moral consideration? If so, we should probably start extending that acknowledgement to them in the realm of abortion, which generates hundreds of thousands of infant deaths every year, like clockwork. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a bit of consistency here, i.e., a dead baby is a dead baby and should be mourned for any reason, the circumstances of their deaths notwithstanding. Of course, to mourn an aborted baby could easily implicate abortion itself as an evil, one that perhaps should be restricted and curtailed. And I kind of get the sense that the press, at any rate, would prefer that not happen.