I know that with my choice of title, I will have readers who are wondering "What on earth could she possibly have against saving babies?" The answer in short is nothing. On the contrary, saving babies is what we should be doing, and in my humble opinion, the BAIPA doesn't go far enough.

For those who are not aware, BAIPA stands for the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. It was passed  and signed it into law by President Bush in late 2002. In a nutshell, what it said was that if a woman has an abortion, and for whatever reason the child happens to survive the procedure after it has been extracted from the womb, the attending physician is required by law to provide medical attention in an attempt to save the baby.

Pretty straightforward, right? Apparently not.

In case you are not already aware, it has been brought to light that Barack Obama opposed a similar measure when it came up in the Illinois State Legislature. He voted against the bill not once but three times, expressing his discomfort with the bill's potential implications to Roe vs Wade.

Now, let's side-step the specific Illinois bill and the fact that it was ultimately altered to identically match the federal bill (which Obama says wasn't harmful to Roe and he would have voted for) and he STILL voted against it, and move on to the meat of the issue. While I am obviously appalled that Obama would vote against saving babies, the one thing I can say in his favor is that at least he's consistent.

The BAIPA, in all its forms, is pure hypocrisy on the part of the government. In essence, we're saying it's OK to kill babies when they're inside the womb, but once they've made it out...well, that's a BIG no-no! What exactly, pray tell, is the difference between a baby at 23 weeks gestation inside its mother's womb and a baby at 23 weeks gestation that is outside of the womb, aside from location? The answer, my dear reader, is nothing.

A baby is a baby is a baby regardless of where it happens to be currently residing.

Which leads me to the issue of abortion in general. While some may think it's "above [their] pay grade" to define when life begins and when a child's life is constitutionally protected, the reality is that if you're not qualified to decipher that, you're not qualified to have an opinion on the issue of abortion to begin with.

"But wait!" you say. " It's not that simple. What about the life of the mother, or rape, or incest, or .." insert the plethora of excuses as to why legalized abortion is necessary. What form of inconvenience the baby is to its mother is not the issue. It's pretty much universally agreed that intentionally killing an innocent human being is wrong; therefore morality of abortion really boils down to the following two questions:

1. When is the baby actually alive?

2. When does the baby qualify as a live human being?

The answers to these two questions are actually startlingly simple.

1. When is the baby alive? What distinguishes a living organism from a non-living one, is growth, reproduction, and reaction to stimuli. The question then becomes: when does the baby start growing and reproducing? As soon as egg and sperm meet, the membrane of the egg immediately begins changing to repel all other sperm, the newly formed cell begins growing and dividing to produce more cells (reproduction).

The easy answer to when life begins is at conception. This one's a no-brainer. But life itself is not the only qualifier here. Plants, animals, even bacteria are alive. But some of those things we wouldn't flinch at extinguishing their existence, if need be. So there's got to be another element in the mix.

2. When does the baby qualify as a live human being? This one's a little tougher to answer, but bare with me here. We've already established that the new cell created when egg and sperm meet is alive, but it can't possibly qualify as a human being, right? To that I must ask you, dear reader, to consider the following question:

If it's not a human being, what else could it possibly be?

That's really the question. I mean, we're not exactly giving birth to cats and dogs. A woman doesn't get pregnant and expect to have a baby dandelion to bring home. Pregnant human women expect to have human babies. So, if it's alive at conception, and we know it's going to come out as a human being, what could it possibly be prior to birth? Was there a chapter in biology that we missed? Is there some sort of fairy dust that's sprinkled onto the baby during its trip down the birth canal that magically transforms the living whatever-it-is into a human being?

Obviously not. It's entirely logical to assume that since the baby's alive and it's going to be born a human being that it IS a human being. And if it is a human being, then it is afforded certain rights under the Constitution, the right to life being one of them. Following this bit of reasoning to its logical conclusion, abortion is wrong because (say it with me here) it is killing a human being.

"But what about viability?"  you ask. Viability of a baby during gestation is whether or not the baby can survive without relying on the mother. Obviously a baby at 12 weeks gestation can't survive outside the mother's body. But what of it? Can a baby at a week post birth survive without another human being (mother or father) to care for it? Of course not. But what would happen if we put our 12-week-old baby out on the side of the road? Would it survive? Obviously not. But what about my one-year-old? What if we dumped him in the woods and left him to his own defenses? Would he survive? No way.

You see, if we follow the viability argument to its logical conclusion, we end up giving the thumbs up to killing our children regardless of whether or not they've made it out of the womb. At what point do we find "viability" in the life of a child when most children, especially those who are very young, could not survive without the care of their parents?

So, let's repeat it once again: Abortion is wrong because you're killing a human being.

Which brings me back to my original point. We apparently have people that believe killing babies is OK but only so long as they're still inside their mothers. That, my friends, is hypocrisy at its finest. While I understand that the intentions behind BAIPA were to protect against doctors arbitrarily flushing aborted infants who managed to survive down the toilet, it still does not go far enough. And until we correct the monstrosity that is Roe vs Wade, we continue to live in a society where the killing of live, innocent human beings is sanctioned.

Jesus said in Matthew 25 "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these...you did for me." It would serve us well to remember that.