Caylee Anthony: A Victim of Late-Term Abortion

Immediately following the ruling in the Casey Anthony murder trial, I was amazed by the amount of outrage from people who believed the mother of Caylee Anthony had gotten away with killing her child.

Not since O.J. Simpson had so many people been convinced of the overwhelming guilt of the defendant, only to wind up in stunned disbelief when the jury failed to convict.

However, the thing that struck me about this case wasn’t the possibility that a murderer had been allowed to go free, but that people were so inexplicably disgusted by this one instance of an atrocity which occurs every day in our country.  That atrocity is not simple murder, or even the murder of a child.

What it is is the rationalization for the legally-protected “right” which our society calls “abortion.”

Indeed, Caylee Anthony serves as the perfect example of why most abortions are committed.  In trying Casey Anthony for murder, the prosecution had to ascribe a motive for her actions.  That motive was simply that Caylee had become an inconvenience for her mother and so Casey decided she had to eliminate the child from her life.

A child requires time, effort, expenses, and other sacrifices which, according to the prosecution, Casey Anthony did not feel like providing.

The jury was told that Casey felt she was being held back from the life she wanted, the life she had once known, by the burden of motherhood. Rather than dealing with the situation like a responsible mother or even seeking an alternative like adoption, Casey took the fast way out and decided to brutally murder her child.

It is true that Casey carried the child to term and eventually gave birth, but short of that, the Anthony case carries the same “who, what, and why” of any other instance of abortion; the only variation in this case is the “when.”  The only thing separating Casey Anthony from millions of other women is the fact that Casey waited longer than most to decide she did not want to be a mother.

One thing I discovered years ago in arguing abortion with the “pro-choice” crowd is that the biggest difficulty in reaching any consensus is that we are essentially arguing on two very different topics.  To someone who opposes abortion, it is all about the life of the unborn child and the preservation of the innocent who cannot protect themselves.  Pro-lifers are not seeking to trample the rights of women or tell anyone what they can and cannot do with their bodies.   Quite the opposite, the position of pro-lifers is the preservation of rights: specifically the right to life.

For the pro-choice crowd, the life of the child does not even factor into the equation.  They look at the issue entirely from the perspective of how it effects the potential parents, usually the mother in particular. 

The most common accusation and complaint comes from their belief that pro-lifers are seeking to control their “choice” of what they can and cannot do with their bodies.  They do not believe pro-lifers are seeking to preserve any form of life, but instead presume it is an excuse to control their lives, their futures, and assert ownership over their bodies.

It seems absurd to many on the other side, but it is a true belief on their part, one dictated entirely by emotion and fear.

It is human nature to desire control of one’s own destiny, and there is no greater expression of that than the physical form.  This belief taps into the primal fear that someone else is seeking control and ownership of them; the fact that a child’s fate also rests in the balance escapes them entirely. 

It is essentially useless to even argue or discuss the topic with these people because emotion blinds them to reason.  It isn’t necessarily that they condone the death of a child; they just don’t see what a child’s death even has to do with the discussion.

As for most “pro-choice” men — and also for the women to whom abortion is not strictly an emotional issue — their stance is a bit more sinister.

Unlike those who look at abortion as a matter of their own body, these people are fully aware that pregnancy means there is a baby on the way. In fact, that is entirely why they feel the need to do something about it.

In discovering that they have an unplanned pregnancy on their hands, their decision to have an abortion centers entirely on the negative impact another human being would have on them personally.  A child requires time, effort, expenses, and other sacrifices which are eerily similar to the reasons the prosecution gave for why Casey Anthony was supposed to have murdered her daughter.

Like a premeditative murderer, these people are fully aware of the facts; they simply have not been equipped with the capacity to care. When it comes right down to it, abortion is almost always handled as a matter of convenience:

•  If a woman feels a child might stand between her and her social life, she gets an abortion.
• If a young couple determines the birth of a child would be too expensive, they stop that birth from occurring.
• If a woman thinks her career might be impaired by the burden of motherhood, she prematurely terminates her baby in order to enhance her own lifestyle.

All of these reasons are the same sort of selfish, hedonistic motives ascribed to Casey Anthony during her murder trial, and they were the very things an entire nation condemned her for and wanted to see her punished for. Our nation has been surprisingly quick to pile on one woman and condemn her actions for the exact same behavior millions of other Americans have been perpetrating and making excuses for in their own lives.

Why does the murder of Caylee Anthony resonate differently from a child who was aborted?  The only real difference is that on this occasion, the child had a name and a face.

When people refer to a “fetus” or “unborn child,” they tend to think in the abstract.  Even sonographic images of a child in the womb show something that might be alive and humanoid, but which many people have trouble identifying as truly human and one of us.

The investigation into the death of Caylee and the trial of her mother changed these things by showing us images of a child smiling, laughing, playing, and beginning her life just as all human beings have done.  She was vulnerable and entirely dependent on her guardian, just like any child in the womb, and just like any aborted child, her guardian let her down, and for precisely the same reasons.

In many ways, Caylee Anthony had things better than millions of children who essentially share her fate.  She was born and cared for in some capacity.  She was given a name, immortalized in photographs, and she now has a grave and a marker to signify that for whatever brief period of time, she was among us.

In the grand scheme of things, it makes little difference that her killer may never be brought to justice.  Millions of other Casey Anthonys are also free and no one seems to have any problem with that.

There is a moral equivalency with the fate of young Caylee Anthony which is difficult for our society to face, but which cannot logically be denied.  If you were never outraged by the ruling in the Roe v Wade trial which essentially legalized abortion throughout our nation decades ago, then you have no right to be outraged by the verdict in the Casey Anthony murder trial.

Travis Sedars
Mason City, Iowa

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