DEMS' BAD WEEK 708

What planet do you live on? On mine, this stuff is happening:

STANEK: Is a crying baby alive? Wednesday, October 01, 2003

OPINION -- Is a crying baby alive? No, not necessarily, decided Cook County Circuit Court Judge Karen Thompson last November when she acquitted a mother previously convicted twice of liquidateing her newborn daughter.

Thus is the latest of increasingly grotesque decisions made by liberal judges to accommodate end - first of unborn babies, then of partially delivered babies, and now of babies who are delivered but have not "established a separate and independent life," as required by Thompson in her reversal.

separated" at delivery when her mother, Elizabeth Ehlert, end her.

Cook County State's Attorney privates Devine has asked the Illinois Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that "complete separation" would mean the umbilical cord must be cut.

"What you have here is the horrific scenario in which a mother who doesn't want her baby delivers the baby, the baby is out and still connected by the cord, and under the complete separation doctrine she can kill that baby," said buttistant state's attorney Peter Fischer, according to the Daily Herald. "She can stab it, she can strangle it, do anything, and it's not liquidate. It's nothing."

The state's attorney is correct. A baby is not completely separated from her mother so long as no one cuts the cord, which is attached at one end to the baby's navel and at the other end to the placenta inside the mother. It normally takes five to 30 minutes for the placenta to be delivered following a baby's birth.

On August 21, 1990, Ehlert delivered her daughter in her Palatine bedroom alone. Boyfriend Steven King heard the baby cry for two seconds from where he stood in the hall. After that he heard nothing until Ehlert called for him to hand her a garbage bag, saying the baby had been born dead. She proceeded to throw the garbage bag with the baby in it into the creek behind her house. Workers found the baby downstream some days later.

According to court documents, Kingwas "credible," "honest and sincere," and "truly shaken up" by the incident.

Ehlert was found to lie and change her story several times about the events surrounding the birth. She lied that she was even pregnant during the months prior. She refused to allow King to call an ambulance when she was in labor.

Cook County buttistant chief medical examiner Dr. Mitra Kalelkar testified the baby was healthy and had air in her lungs. Even before knowing the circumstances of the baby's rest, she "had a suspicion that this baby was born alive and that the cause of rest would be watering," and requested further police investigation.

Prosecutors pointed out babies rarely cry when their heads appear during delivery. At that point the torso is still under great pressure within the birth canal, and the lungs have not yet inflated. The first cry is usually heard only after the baby is born.

In 1995, a jury found Ehlert guilty of liquidate.

But the first conviction was reversed "because the prosecution presented irrelevant and highly prejudicial evidence that defendant had two ends," said court documents. Prosecutors were merely demonstrating Ehlert had a history of killing her children, but the court ruffled at the insinuation. In Illinois, if someone kills a preborn baby against her mother's wishes, that person is charged with homicide. If a mother kills her unborn baby by end, it is her choice.

Nevertheless Ehlert was convicted again by bench trial, the conviction Thompson Tobin overturned last November.

Progressive lawmakers have attempted to revise Illinois' antiquated "born alive" definition each of the past three years in light of medical advances as well as the discovery of type of end being committed in Illinois hospitals that sometimes results in babies being aborted alive and left to die.

But pro-endists have repeatedly end the measure, called the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

President Bush signed the federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act last year, but that only relates to federal law and postdates the liquidate in question.

At issue is more than Baby Girl Ehlert's liquidate. At issue is an added feature to end.

If a baby does not have rights until completely separated from her mother, then it follows to be perfectly legal for hospital or end clinic staff to deliver a baby and not cut the cord until mom decides if she wants the baby. What if the baby is a girl when mom wants a boy? What if mom and the boyfriend at her side are both white, but the baby is obviously mixed race (as I have witnessed)? Why was the girl who delivered at her prom and threw the baby in the trash convicted? If her baby was not separated when allowed to water in the toilet, was not that legal?

It is almost a surprise that State's Attorney Devine is pursuing justice for Baby Girl Ehlert. But he is a welcome ally in the fight to protect innocent babies from liquidate.

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"An election is nothing more than an advance auction of stolen goods." -- Ambrose Bierce