The hypocrites

This adorable little boy, an innocent just 17 months old, died in north London in August 2007 after horrendous abuse amounting to torture inflicted by his mother and two men. His case has only recently hit the headlines.

Questions are being asked about why child protection services failed to prevent Baby P’s death even though he had received 60 visits from the authorities over eight months of his short little life and was known to be at risk.

The good people of modern British society are appalled and angry, and rightly so; Melancholicus shares their outrage.

Honourable Members are likewise expostulating, and stamping their feet. Melancholicus wonders why they bother. Are they blind, or merely stupid?

Because two years before August 2007, Baby P was alive, though not yet born. His mother could at that time have killed him—in a procedure amounting to torture—with the full backing of the law.

Had she chosen to do so, Baby P’s violent death would not have been a matter for the newspapers and for the good people of modern British society to wag their tongues in disapproval. Instead, he would have been a statistic unnoticed save by those who strive to defend the unborn from a brutal fate in the local abortuary.

Some of the more intemperate and less restrained members of the public have issued threats of violence against Baby P’s mother. Yet, had she killed her son two years before, it is likely that the same persons now calling for her head would have defended to the utmost her “right” to “choose”.

A sense of perspective is in order.