Baby 59 made headlines all over the world earlier this week when a video of his rescue began to circulate. The newborn baby boy, named after the incubator number where he spent the first couple of days of his life, was rescued from a toilet drainage pipe after residents of the apartment building heard cries coming from the plumbing. Initially, authorities thought the baby had been abandoned and said they would be treating the case as one of attempted homicide. However, local authorities have now concluded that the baby was trapped by accident after reports coming from the mother insisted that she went to the shared bathroom when she felt abdominal cramps. She explained that the baby slipped into the sewer pipe and she was unable to free him. It was the mother herself who sounded the alarm for the rescue team to come. She was present during the rescue that lasted well over two hours and explained that she wanted to raise the child herself but had no idea how to do it.
I have found the images and videos from the baby's rescue to be some of the most deeply heart-wrenching and emotionally disturbing I have seen in a very long time. British columnist Jonathan Jones writes, "Some pictures are moving because they make you sympathize with victims of violence. This one exerts a terrible psychological hold because the baby's release from the pipe is a macabre travesty of birth". He then goes on to describe his own emotional response to the images, "For me this poor baby is a figure of ultimate abandonment, a child whose early hours were spent in a filthy claustrophobic tube, with injuries that include a broken skull, fighting for life – and crying, successfully, for help – in the darkness and dirt."
Ultimate abandonment, filth, broken skull, fighting for life, crying for help - that was the state of this Chinese baby when the world first heard of him. The images and sounds that were witnessed can hardly be imagined. I cannot think of one person that was not, at that moment in time, waiting patiently and hoping that somehow this baby could survive.
There was, however, another person present at that rescue who needed help, who needed care and who needed support. It is hard to imagine what the mother was going through. Single, alone, and afraid, she watched as local authorities cut the pipe open to reveal her baby boy still attached to the placenta. Whether or not her story is completely true and regardless of whether or not more details about her circumstances will come up later, there is a sense of sympathy for the mentally and emotionally paralyzed mother.
Nevertheless, at that moment, all efforts were on the baby, all eyes were on the baby, all hopes were on the baby, all prayers were for the baby.
It is hard to imagine that any person at that moment would hesitate to do everything within their power to save the baby's life. We know, however, that in our culture that is exactly what takes place. The moral and natural priorities exhibited in the rescue of Baby 59 to savea baby's life regardless of any circumstances or desires stand in stark contrast to those of our nation, where a mother's choice trumps the decision to keep her baby alive.
To this day, Canada remains the only country in the developed world where there are no laws regulating abortions. In our nation, a mother can legally abort her baby at any point in time during her pregnancy - including up to the delivery itself. It is not a crime for a doctor (or anyone else for that matter) to kill the baby as per the mother's instructions as long as the child is not yet fully born. While there are different provincial and medical policies and regulations whereby a doctor might lose his or her license to practice if such an event were to take place, they would not be charged with a crime.
According to Stats Canada, there were 377,213 live births in Canada in 2010(1). In that same year there were also 64,641 abortions reported nationwide(2). That's more than 1 abortion for every 7 births! However, since the court struck down reporting requirements in 1988, it is difficult to know how accurate these figures are - they are obviously reflective of only a fraction of the abortions that took place.
It is hard to rationalize or imagine an alternate conclusion to the baby's rescue in China. The authorities could have stopped and asked the mother what she wanted to do with the baby prior to beginning the rescue, and she might have said "I'm not ready to have a baby", or "the baby is really sick", or "the baby is an inconvenience to me at this time, please kill it". The rescuers might have then heeded the mother's instructions and proceeded to remove the crying baby from the pipes and done as the mother had asked.
That alternate video would have undoubtedly sparked a warranted debate and protest against what had just happened. The truth, however, is that this alternate story would not be very different from what happens in our city, in our hospitals, in our clinics, in our own backyard every single day - legally, quietly and privately.
This alternate ending to Baby 59's life is not unlike what Alisa LaPolt Snow, a lobbyist representing Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, argued should happen to a live baby of a "botched" abortion. When asked what Planned Parenthood would want to have happen to a child that is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, she responded, "We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician". You can watch the shocking response she gave on behalf of Planned Parenthood during the Civil Justice Subcommittee's consideration of the "Infants Born Alive Act" just a few weeks ago by clicking here.
The fact that any decision that is made regarding a baby's life should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician is exactly what Canadian laws seem to endorse and support. A mother in Canada can give any or no reason at all for wanting to abort her baby at any point in her pregnancy. While she might find it hard to find a reputable doctor to do so later on in pregnancy, it not something that is illegal and many times it is deemed "understandable". That veto over a child's life in the form of a choice is precisely what pro-choice advocates believe the priorities are. They believe the decisive verdit in determining whether a baby should live or die should come down to a choice, and not the baby's. But that is precisely what we don't see or could imagine seeing when we watch the video of this baby's rescue. When it comes to Baby 59, it is simply unfathomable to think that there could have existed any reason or circumstance given by the baby's mother that would have changed the outcome of the rescue.
Maybe it was the video. Maybe it was actually seeing a baby fighting to survive the only way it knows to fight - through tears and wailing. Maybe we don't really believe that choice trumps life. Maybe Gregg Cunningham was right, "Injustice that is invisible inevitably becomes tolerable. But injustice that is made visible inevitably becomes intolerable".
(1). Stats Canada, CANSIM, "Table 102-4503: Births and total fertility rate, by province and territory", Statistics Canada, 2013, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/hlth85a-eng.htm
