Some of you may be familiar with Schrödinger’s cat.
Essentially, it is a philosophical exercise in physics (PIF – Physics Is Fun!). The experiment starts with a cat in a box (best place for one, btw), accompanied by a radioactive source linked to a device (all completely independent of interaction with the cat) that will release a poison if a sufficient quantity of the radioactive material decays within a pre-defined period of time.
Since radioactive decay at a certain level becomes an exercise in probability, we cannot know at any given time if the source has decayed to the point necessary to release the poison.
Schrödinger then posits that at that point in time, we cannot know for certain if the cat is dead or alive. In other words, the cat could be considered to be dead and alive at the same time.
You may now inquire: “Where exactly are you going with this, oh wagonburner who is wise beyond your years?”
Via Instapundit, I found a blog posting by GayPatriot (scandalous!!!) wherein the penalties for various actions are vastly different between males and females. In particular, we find that men have been convicted of murder when a gestating fetus has been killed (for a variety of reasons) well within the gestational period during which abortion is legal. Specifically:
- This May, a Florida man was indicted on federal first-degree murder charges, because he aborted his girlfriend’s fetus (giving her an abortion drug without her knowledge). News articles state that she was six weeks pregnant (well under such legal abortion limits as 20 or 24 weeks).
- Also in May, the 300+ charges on rapist-kidnapper Ariel Castro included one charge of aggravated murder, because his assaults on his female victims had terminated a pregnancy.
- In 2004, a CA man was charged with murder after his pregnant girlfriend’s fetus died, due to his assaults on her.
Why is it that when a woman terminates a pregnancy she can employ most any means she (or her abortionist) determines necessary with absolutely no legal consequence, but a man (or anyone else, for that matter) will be liable for murder for the same outcome?
This led to a commenter (with a very similar nom de web as your humble correspondent) making a connection to Schrödinger’s cat using the term “Schrödinger’s baby” because we don’t know whether a baby is a person before the law until it has been killed or born.
At that point, it is, of course, much too late.
Addendum:
Another commenter noted that State Rep Jessica Farrar (who claims to be a devout Catholic somehow) sponsored a bill in the Legislature to reduce the crime for killing an actual born-alive, real baby up to 12 months after its birth would be – definitionally – a less-than-murder crime.
But only if the “mother” did it.
In essence, what she is proposing is a three-class system of human life: full personhood (>12mo old); mostly-a-personhood (<12mo old with the mother in complete control of life and death); usually not a personhood (unborn, but may be a person if the mother was planning on delivering the child).
What a tangled web we weave when we detach ourselves from the truth.