Minnesota True

Did you know that Minnesota Law affirms that abortion is a legal form of murder? Minnesota has laws against the murder of the unborn. And so, in order to allow abortion, an exception clause is added to the unborn child murder laws, excepting the cases when the death of the unborn is caused by an abortion. This clearly admits that abortion is identical to the act that is described in unborn child murder laws, and so it requires an exception for legalization.

During the two years of trifecta Democratic control, Minnesota’s progressive politicians abolished every law restricting abortion, ultimately granting unlimited access to abortion for any reason, up to the moment of birth. Minnesota has made a loud and bold claim through this legislation that there is nothing human about a pre-born child, even up to the day, week, or month before she is born. The possibility that a pre-born child might be human and deserving of the right to live has been gunned down by legislation, bulldozed into a deep ditch and covered over with tidy words in black and white. You are supposed to gaze at this legislation and ask no questions about what just happened.

However, an uncomfortable reminder of the humanity of pre-born children is still enshrined in Minnesota law. And these other laws do require us to continue to ask questions about the souls who have been dehumanized by abortion.

Minnesota has several laws against the murder of unborn children. The murder of an unborn child is a felony in Minnesota and the required sentence is imprisonment for life. Enacted in 1986, Minnesota has laws against 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd degree murder of the unborn, as well as against manslaughter of the unborn in the 1^st and 2^nd degrees, and assault of the unborn in the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd degrees.

There is only one stage in human development when a person is considered to be ‘unborn’. That period of time begins at conception and ends when a child has moved from his mother’s womb into the world outside. So, to be clear, unborn child murder and manslaughter laws cover the life of a child from conception until birth. All of the ordinary murder laws apply after birth. These laws exist specifically to affirm the full humanity of the child before birth, and to exact justice when the life of a child is wrongfully ended before birth:

Minnesota statute 609.2661 MURDER OF UNBORN CHILD IN THE FIRST DEGREE.

Whoever does any of the following is guilty of murder of an unborn child in the first degree and must be sentenced to imprisonment for life:

• causes the death of an unborn child with premeditation and with intent to effect the death of the unborn child or of another

Minnesota Law 609.2661 simply states that if someone causes the death of an unborn child with premeditation and with intent to effect the death of the unborn child they are guilty of murder. However, every year in Minnesota over 10,000 unborn children are killed by someone who has the premeditated intent to effect the death of these children, but alas, they are a protected class. At the end of the laws against the murder and manslaughter of unborn children there is listed this exception:

609.269 EXCEPTION.

Sections 609.2661 to 609.268 do not apply to a person providing reproductive health care offered, arranged, or furnished:

(1) for the purpose of terminating a pregnancy; and

(2) with the consent of the pregnant individual or the pregnant individual’s representative, except in a medical emergency in which consent cannot be obtained.

When people in the pro-life movement say that abortion is the murder of unborn babies, they are being entirely consistent with Minnesota law. Abortion is legal murder. If it was not, the exception clause would not be attached to our law on first-degree murder of the unborn. The exception was added because it is so clearly obvious that what occurs in an abortion is described in statue 609.2661. So, in order to allow abortion, the exception had to be added.

The pro-life position does not have different words for same-outcome actions. In a punishable murder of an unborn child, a person commits a premeditated act that has the effect of killing the child (or another person, ie. the mother and therefore the child as well). However, in most cases of unborn child murder, the child is not the purposed victim, but an incidental one. In an abortion, a doctor commits a premeditated, violent act with the sole intent of killing the child. Innocent blood is spilled either way. Innocent blood always cries out for justice, and it will never stop crying out until justice is served.

When I was in college, I took a philosophy class at the University of Minnesota called “Moral Problems in Contemporary Society”. We learned both sides on issues such as the death penalty, abortion, and just war theories. Our professor believed that she was giving us the best academic papers on each side of every topic that we studied. When it came to abortion, she did not give us reels about women’s reproductive rights because she knew that those claims do not answer the pro-life position concerning the death of the child.

The pro-choice argument we were given was Judith Jarvis Thomson’s essay “A Defense of Abortion”. The argument acknowledges that the thing in the womb is in fact a human being. However, the person in the womb is likened to an intruder or a parasite. The unwanted baby has come in uninvited like a thief in the night. And so, killing the intruder is justified, just as self-defense is justified if someone is breaking into your home.

I appreciate that this argument understands that a moral defense of abortion must justify the intentional killing of an unborn child. When I hear pro-choice voices championing abortion, they usually use phrases like “reproductive rights” and “autonomy” and “freedom to choose” which focus on the plight of the mother in a tough situation. But they seldom actually make an argument for the morality of the act which kills a living baby. What my professor offered was a moral defense for the act of abortion. But this argument is not often used in social media wars, senate hearings, or on MPR musings because it doesn’t really sit well with the general public. Nonetheless, let us be fair and evaluate this argument on its own terms.

First, we will compare it with the to the pro-life moral argument against abortion. The pro-life position has always been the same:

Premise A: It is immoral to take an innocent human life.

Premise B: Abortion intentionally ends an innocent human life.

Conclusion: Abortion is immoral.

The pro-choice position must either argue that an unborn child is not a human being, which is scientifically untenable. Or it must argue, as Thompson did, that the unborn child is not innocent.

Alternately, it is more common to argue that a fetus is a human but not a person, and that a human fetus can be killed with just cause, but not a person. For one thing, this argument is unfalsifiable because it depends on invented categories (are ‘a person’ and ‘a human’ really different things?) and an unprovable premise that something significant happens at birth, or 22 weeks gestation, or whatever arbitrary point is chosen.  There is a wide sliding scale among those who argue this way and no one can agree on when this personhood begins. But this argument still falls apart because the unborn child murder laws show that we do not really believe that anything special happens at birth. If a wanted child dies at 19 weeks gestation due to an unwanted violent act, the actor is charged with the murder and sentenced to life in prison – the same sentence for murdering a five-year-old. This shows that the human/person argument is really just framed as a more palatable version of Thompson’s argument, as it does concede that an unborn human being may be killed if there is a good reason. So we are still just back to Thompson’s argument that the fetus has violated a woman’s body, entered in uninvited, and on those grounds can be justly killed.

Now, perhaps you know that crime and punishment (if that is how we are to see parasite-babies and abortion as self-defense) depend on the criminal being both aware of and morally responsible for his or her harmful actions (womb-break-ins in this case).

But in case I have to say it, babies cannot be likened to a thief breaking into a house as they have no moral agency nor capability to act in their own conception. But to push the point a little further, it would be better for unborn babies if in fact they were treated as thieves under Minnesota law, because the sentence for theft of any type is not death. In fact, no crimes are sentenced with death in Minnesota. The death penalty was abolished in our state in 1911. However, if my philosophy instructor correctly provided us with the best moral argument justifying abortion, and if Minnesota now has the most permissive abortion laws any state or nation could possibly have, then it stands to reason that the only people who are still executed for their crimes in Minnesota are womb-thieves.

In this context, a passage from the prophetic book of Jeremiah speaks with chilling precision to our present times:

On your clothes men find

The lifeblood of the innocent poor,

Though you did not catch them breaking in (2:34)

While babies have a say in their existence 0% of the time, the vast majority of unwanted pregnancies occur when two people who do have moral agency happily engage in an act known to create babies. Therefore, the right thing to do when that activity actually results in a baby, is to at least let the baby have an opportunity to live. If possible, it is even better to let the baby have the chance to know and be loved by the biological family he or she was made from.

The only difference between the illegal murder of the unborn and legal abortion in Minnesota is the desire of the adults involved. The effect and outcome from the child’s perspective are identical. The pain that both feel in death are the same. But much more seriously, each child is denied the right to live his or her own unique, never-to-be duplicated life.

The right to life is not imputed by parents. The right that every human being has to his or her own life is inherent, and taking that life is a violation of the child’s right to his or her own body.

Minnesota law 609.2661 affirms the full humanity of an unborn child throughout the whole length of a pregnancy, while HF1 denies the humanity of an unborn child throughout the whole length of a pregnancy. Both cannot be true at the same time.