Via Drudge, there is this story from Britain’s Sunday Times on the increasing number of babies who are surviving attempted abortion procedures. Albeit surviving with injuries. Unencumbered by a Supreme Court fiat that demands an unlimited “right to abortion,” Britain’s laws instead seem to be based vaguely around the concept of viability. Abortions are permitted up to 24 weeks. As I understand what this article is telling us, doctors in Britain are colliding with medical advances which would permit saving the life of a child born towards the end of that stage, and indeed earlier. If the child comes out of the womb alive, and that care is not administered, are the doctors not guilty of killing by neglect?

Well, at least they’re worrying about it.

Paul Clarke, a neonatal intensive care specialist in Norwich, has treated a boy born at 24 weeks after three failed abortion attempts. The mother decided to keep the child, who is now two years old but is suffering what doctors call “significant ongoing medical problems”.

“The survival of this child was not recorded in any official statistics,” Clarke said. “There is nothing at the moment to force abortion practitioners to account for their failures.”

The issue will be highlighted by Gianna Jessen, 28, who survived an attempt to abort her. She is to speak at a parliamentary meeting on December 6 organised by the Alive and Kicking campaign, which is lobbying for a reduction of the abortion limit to 18 weeks.

Jessen, a musician from Nashville, Tennessee, was left with cerebral palsy but is to run in the London marathon next April to raise funds for fellow sufferers.

“If abortion is about women’s rights, then what were my rights?” she asked.

It’s a harbinger of the debate that hopefully will one day soon take place in the United States, and which would be ongoing were it not for the stifling of debate by Roe v Wade in 1973.

Imagine: an inability to relevantly debate the merits of killing a million babies a year. No need to imagine, of-course, because that is the status-quo in America. Oh sure, you can talk about it. But a debate where there are winners and losers and actual results? Nope. All that matters is what the nine berobed life-time untouchables think. It’s rather unbelievable that such a situation has existed in the “land of the free” for 32 years now. As much as many things will be said in the upcoming battle over Judge Samuel Alito, this is what it will all be about.

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Dylan remarks, in the notes to Biograph, that it has occurred to him that the following song “could have been written from a baby’s point of view.” Listening to it that way makes it even sweeter and funnier than it already is, and not just a little poignant.

Close your eyes, close the door,
You don’t have to worry any more.
I’ll be your baby tonight.

Kick your shoes off, do not fear,
Bring that bottle over here.
I’ll be your baby tonight.

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