Like many others, I have been watching the news out of Cleveland this week: the three young women who escaped after more than a decade of captivity, rape, torture and other abuse. There is a lot to be said about this story, but most of that has been discussed at considerable length already.
However, tonight I happened to catch something that has led me to articulate some thoughts aloud...
Apparently, at least one of the women became pregnant because of the Castro brothers (Ariel, the eldest, is still being held but his brothers are free for now). It's being reported that at least one child was born but the others were killed as a result of induced miscarriages.
Ariel Castro, the "leader" of the three brothers charged with the kidnappings and torture, now faces the possibility of the death penalty if tried and convicted. That is, if it is determined that he is responsible
for purposefully causing one of the five miscarriages that hostage Michelle Knight suffered. Knight was reportedly starved for more than two weeks and then Ariel Castro "repeatedly punched her in the stomach until she miscarried".
Here is what prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty told reporters earlier today...
“Based on the facts, I fully intend to seek charges for each and
every act of sexual violence, rape, each day of kidnapping, every
felonious assault, all his attempted murders and each act of aggravated
murder he committed by terminating pregnancies” during the years the
women were held, McGinty said.
"My office of the county prosecutor will also engage in a formal
process in which we evaluate whether to seek charges eligible for the
death penalty," he said. "The law of Ohio calls for the death penalty
for those most depraved criminals who commit aggravated murder during
the course of a kidnapping."
That is what Castro's alleged crime is being legally defined as: "aggravated murder". McGinty made it clear that Castro's actions were "attempted murders" and "murder he committed by terminating pregnancies".
And for his heinous actions, Ariel Castro could be put to death.
But how is what Ariel Castro has reputedly done any different from abortion: something that has long enjoyed legal protection?
If Michelle's children were conceived as a result of Ariel raping her, and he is biologically the father and he didn't want any of them well... isn't that what happens thousands of times each day across America? When a parent does not want a child?
How is it possible to defend the killing of unborn children as a legal "right" on the basis that they are not yet full-born human beings but rather an "unviable tissue mass", yet murder charges can be pressed against a man who likely killed at least one unborn child on the basis that these
were humans he exterminated?
Logically, it is not possible. Logically, it does not make sense.
How is the same act of killing someone a "protected right" in one situation and "aggravated murder" in another?
Want to know something? I would bet real money that if Ariel Castro is charged with murder, the pro-abortion crowd is going to be sorely tempted to come out guns blazing against those charges. Because if unborn children can be legally defined as having the right to live and that said right being denied is grounds for capital punishment, then the entire legal basis of abortion collapses.
It will have to. There can be no prosecution for the murder of five innocent unborn children in one matter and a rigorous defending of "the right to choose" and "the right to privacy" so as to put to death unborn children in another.
We can't have it both ways.
