Twisted Thinking

“The only way that an outside observer can determine whether any entity feels pain is if the entity communicates distress to the observer. The parties agree that fetuses are unable to communicate, so it is impossible to determine conclusively if the stress responses seen in fetuses in fact translate into an actual pain response…”

So wrote Judge Phyllis Hamilton as she struck down the Partial Birth Abortion ban. This kind of thinking will cause me to lose sleep at night.

My wife works at a residential care facility for the Developmentally Disabled, many of whom are totally incapable of communicating in any meaningful way. By Judge Hamilton’s reasoning, why would it be wrong for someone to go through the campus and kill those clients? Heck, we don’t even have to go so far as killing—could the facility use her logic to explain why they don’t investigate charges of abuse? (this is a purely rhetorical question—they do investigate).

On a side note, I wonder what she’d say about Animal Cruelty Laws—I mean, the dogs can’t really communicate with us. No matter what we like to think, we don’t really know what they’re thinking.

Oh, for a judiciary bound by the law….