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STANEK: Is a crying baby alive?
Illinois Leader ^ | Wednesday, October 01, 2003 | Jill Stanek

Posted on 10/02/2003 8:30:02 PM PDT by nickcarraway

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 murdering her newborn daughter.

Thus is the latest of increasingly grotesque decisions made by liberal judges to accommodate abortion - 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.

In question is whether a six-pound, 19-inch baby girl was “completely separated” at delivery when her mother, Elizabeth Ehlert, killed her.

Cook County State’s Attorney Dick 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 assistant state’s attorney Peter Fischer, according to the Daily Herald. “She can stab it, she can strangle it, do anything, and it’s not murder…. 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 assistant 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 death, she "had a suspicion that this baby was born alive and that the cause of death would be drowning," 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 murder.

But the first conviction was reversed “because the prosecution presented irrelevant and highly prejudicial evidence that defendant had two abortions,” 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 abortion, 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 abortion being committed in Illinois hospitals that sometimes results in babies being aborted alive and left to die.

But pro-abortionists have repeatedly killed 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 murder in question.

At issue is more than Baby Girl Ehlert’s murder. At issue is an added feature to abortion.

If a baby does not have rights until completely separated from her mother, then it follows to be perfectly legal for hospital or abortion 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 drown 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 murder.

***************


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Front Page News; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Philosophy; Politics/Elections; US: Illinois
KEYWORDS: abortion; abortionlist; courts; hospitals; illinois; medicine; nhs; prolife; seeninthesky
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To: NotJustAnotherPrettyFace
Thanks for the heads up.

In NJ, once you are appointed to the county bench, you serve 7 yrs. then after that if no Senator complains, you're on for life.
41 posted on 10/03/2003 9:54:53 AM PDT by Coleus (Only half the patients who go into an abortion clinic come out alive.)
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To: nickcarraway
This is pure feminazi doctrine: do nothing which would remotely detract from a woman's 'right' to kill a baby.
Feminazis are the enemy.
42 posted on 10/03/2003 10:38:38 AM PDT by BooksForTheRight.com (Feminazis gave us this)
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To: NotJustAnotherPrettyFace
Thanks, can you make any sense out of posts #1 and 19, seems 1 is an editorial and 19 is a new article and they don't seem to jive. Have you been following the story in your local papers?
43 posted on 10/03/2003 10:49:04 AM PDT by Coleus (Only half the patients who go into an abortion clinic come out alive.)
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To: Okies love Dubya 2
"I believe my children were alive the second they were conceived...."

I too feel that way. Unfortunately, I get a lot crap, particularly because I'm male, thrown my way for this belief.

It is amazing how we as humans can turn such a precious gift from God into such horror.
44 posted on 10/03/2003 11:06:21 AM PDT by PigRigger (Send donations to http://www.AdoptAPlatoon.org)
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To: nickcarraway; Eaker; habs4ever; Ditter; shaggy eel; dorben; Son of Rooster; Tennessee_Bob; ...
Is a crying baby alive? No, not necessarily, decided Cook County Circuit Court Judge Karen Thompson

Oh... My... God. Forgive us.

45 posted on 10/03/2003 11:08:50 AM PDT by Terriergal ("multipass!")
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To: Terriergal
Forgiveness follows repentence.

May our nation repent of this unspeakable evil. And may God have mercy on us all for tolerating it.

46 posted on 10/03/2003 11:13:00 AM PDT by Skooz (All Hail the Mighty Kansas City Chiefs)
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To: nickcarraway
I knew it would come to this. It's the logical endpoint of the "separation" argument. We have already seen that idiot Boxer arguing in the Senate that if a hand or a foot is left in the birth canal then there is no effective separation, so sucking the brains out of the baby at that point is still permitted.

Think about what they've done here. They've invested one's "humanity" in the presence or absence of a scrap of connective tissue. That's about as poor a proxy for humanity, if one could stand the thought of such, as you can imagine.

What the pro-aborts are advocating, while straining for all sorts of logical and factual gymnastics and contortions to avoid facing, is that women have the right to kill innocent people under some circumstances, with no justification or due process or ethical obligation to consider otherwise, and no one else has the moral authority to intervene or even question it. This latest judicial outrage is just one more point to prove that this is truly a world gone mad.

47 posted on 10/03/2003 11:15:15 AM PDT by chimera
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To: PigRigger; Okies love Dubya 2
It is amazing how we as humans can turn such a precious gift from God into such horror

Jeremiah 17: 9
"The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

48 posted on 10/03/2003 11:15:16 AM PDT by Terriergal ("multipass!")
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To: chimera
What the pro-aborts are advocating, while straining for all sorts of logical and factual gymnastics and contortions to avoid facing, is that women have the right to kill innocent people under some circumstances

Ding ding ding! WE have a winner!

This latest judicial outrage is just one more point to prove that this is truly a world gone mad.

Sadly, I have to agree... Maranatha!

49 posted on 10/03/2003 11:16:32 AM PDT by Terriergal ("multipass!")
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To: Terriergal
Understand, may God forgive us.
50 posted on 10/03/2003 11:19:50 AM PDT by PigRigger (Send donations to http://www.AdoptAPlatoon.org)
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To: Terriergal
This is from the best article ever written about abortion, imo. Barbara Curtis in "The Sisterhood, 27 Years Later"

How about it, sisters? Especially those of you who rode the crest of the second wave with me: Did you ever dream that this was where we were headed? Did you ever dream we would call a politician a friend to women - no matter how flagrantly he exploited them - as long as he continued to back abortion on demand? Did you ever dream we would enter the realms of denial required to condone a procedure in which a perfectly viable infant is pulled feet first through the birth canal until all but herhead is exposed, then stabbed in the skull to suck out her brains, delivered dead and sold to the highest bidder for body parts?

That's "a certain type of late-term procedure," according to modern feminists, who have twisted themselves like pretzels to pretend the dream did not turn into a nightmare.


51 posted on 10/03/2003 11:24:10 AM PDT by Skooz (All Hail the Mighty Kansas City Chiefs)
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To: Terriergal
I'm freekin' stunned....

I'm not one to condone violence when discussing the abortion issue, but both these women need to be destroyed for the overall good of the species....


Just.... DAMN!!!
52 posted on 10/03/2003 12:36:29 PM PDT by cavtrooper21 (Shoot them if they stand. Cut them if they run.)
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To: Skooz
nauseating. Makes me want to lie prostrate sobbing for days/weeks for this country. I don't know how else to express such anguish.
53 posted on 10/04/2003 8:57:33 AM PDT by Terriergal ("multipass!")
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To: cavtrooper21
I hear ya. It's funny how people justify the actions (out of frustration or hate) of pali suicide bombers but not those who might block entrance to an abortion clinic.
54 posted on 10/04/2003 8:58:45 AM PDT by Terriergal ("multipass!")
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To: reagan_fanatic
"Part of everyone's prayers should be asking God Almighty's forgiveness for America's complicity in these atrocities.

I agree that we ALL share a burden of responsibility for the horrors of abortion in our nation, especially if we are silent or do nothing to stop it.

One of the most important steps toward ending our American holocaust is convincing the masses that they personally are responsible for the continuation of abortion, through inaction and silence on this issue.

Another vital step is making America aware of the real horrors of the right to choose death for our children. Most of us live our lives in full or partial denial of the horrors of abortion. The public should be confronted with the visual truth of abortion, (http//www.abotionno.org).

I consider myself active in the pro-life movement as vice-chair of a chapter of Oregon Right to Life, but found a renewed sense of urgency in my efforts after seeing the truth with my own eyes. The pro-abortion folks will initially be angered by being confronted with the horrors of their position, because it will challenge their denial regarding the humanity of the pre-born human beings murdered by abortion. Many others may be angered because their conscience will demand a more active roll in the defense OUR children.

America suffers a self-inflicted 9/11 each and every day of every year, because of the apathy and inaction in this war on our pre-born children and our addiction to recreational, unprotected sex.

55 posted on 10/09/2003 12:29:02 PM PDT by Got a right to Life? . . Huh? (Not if you were conceived after Roe v. Wade.)
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To: StriperSniper
but have not “established a separate and independent life,” as required by Thompson

The F'in B!*%# should have her 'umbilical cord' to the taxpayers severed! (At the least.)

Wow, this is extremely late but I couldn't resist.

A quote from a Canadian:
"The reference that the baby is has "not established a separate and independent life" so it is not murder is very interesting. Does this mean that any man has the right to legally kill an ex-spouse on the grounds that she asks for financial support because she has "not established a separate and independent life"? How ludicrous."

The lady who aborted her born daughter should be aborted by the tax payers since she "has not established a seperate and independant life".

56 posted on 10/16/2003 1:17:05 PM PDT by m1-lightning (Pay your taxes with stamps. Maybe they'll get the hint.)
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To: m1-lightning
The judge would be my choice, she is dangerous.
57 posted on 10/16/2003 1:23:14 PM PDT by StriperSniper (All this, of course, is simply pious fudge. - H. L. Mencken)
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