Christa Pike was convicted of the brutal murder of her classmate and sentenced to death. Tennessee’s execution attempt Thursday failed. Now she is in critical condition and receiving lifesaving care, according to her lawyer. The rationale is that even a person guilty of murder must not suffer needlessly. Many forms of executions are no longer used because they’re considered cruel.
But what about the barbaric executions we still routinely perform on children? What the baby who survives an abortion attempt? What kind of society believes that even the people who commit the worst, most detestably evil crimes deserve humane treatment, but children can be viciously murdered at whim by tearing them apart limb from limb in the womb?
That child has committed no crime. There was no due process, no trial, no conviction, no sentence—only a tiny, helpless human being who is alive and entirely dependent on adults to protect him or her.
Yet abortion is the leading cause of death in the United States. The procedures can only be described as excessively and senselessly cruel. Reported cases on babies that survived abortion show that some have been left without life-saving treatment. Minnesota recorded three infants born alive after abortions in 2017; none survived. One received “comfort care” and another received no specific care. A former labor-and-delivery nurse testified that she cradled a baby born alive after an abortion at a Chicago hospital while the infant died.
Let the contrast sink in: when the state’s attempt to kill a convicted murderer fails, doctors rush to save her life. When a mother’s attempt to kill an innocent child fails, Congress still argues over whether the law should explicitly require appropriate care. The House passed such a bill in 2025. It has not become law.
An innocent baby deserves protection—without political hesitation and without exceptions based on how that child came to be conceived or born.
If we can insist on compassion and competent care for the rightly condemned, we have no excuse for withholding it from the innocent who rightly deserve life.
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