Do you remember Sutherland Springs?
Maybe not. We’ve grown so inured to atrocities that a six-year-old mass shooting probably long ago receded out of most people’s memories—if they don’t live in its vicinity.
To recap: six years ago, on Sunday, November 5, 2017, a man entered the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, shooting and wounding 22 people, shooting and killing 26 people.
Or was it 25?
Among the victims of the shooting spree was the Holcombe Family. John (60), Karla (58), Marc (36), Crystal (36), and Noah (1).
Except that Crystal was eight months pregnant. Her unborn child even had a name: Carlin.
Texas counted Carlin as a victim and said 26 people died that Sunday in Sutherland Springs.
Now, God forbid this barbarity take place again, in Ohio. But let’s engage in a thought experiment.
On Tuesday, November 7, 2023, Ohio voters will decide Issue One, which declares abortion through birth is a constitutionally protected “choice” in Ohio.
Under Issue One, would Carlin be a victim?
Who knows?
Issue One declares that “every individual has the right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including … abortion.” Now, when it comes to the unborn child, is he a “person” or not?
Issue One is unclear. Is he a “person” whose personhood doesn’t count, or at least is preempted by the decision to have an abortion? Or is he not a person at all? Is he a never a person, sometimes a person, or always a person? Issue One doesn’t answer that question, at least clearly.
So, if a shooter shot Carlin Holcombe in Cincinnati, could Ohio charge him with murder?
You can’t be killed if you’re not a person. And, when it comes to the abortion decision, you’re not a person (at least not a person who counts) under Issue One.
But could you be a person for a murder charge? Crystal Holcombe clearly had made a “reproductive decision” to bear a child. So, does that make Carlin a person before birth? Did he “become” a person for legal purposes because his mother wanted to carry him to term? Or would Carlin remain a “non-person” until birth, in which case he could not be included among the victims of the mass shooting?
Or, under the logic of Issue One, Carlin is sometimes a “person” (if his mother wants him) and sometimes not (if she doesn’t)?
Does anybody think peek-a-boo personhood, manifesting and vanishing, is an inconsistency?
Carlin Holcombe was a month away from birth. Had the child not been shot, the child would probably have been born normally. The child was viable.
Or was the child?
Let’s engage in a further thought experiment. Let’s say a child like Carlin had been injured, rather than killed, by the shooter. Let’s say the bullet caused some significant injury, paralysis or a brain injury. What if Carlin’s mother survived and, finding out her baby was injured, decided she did not want to raise a handicapped child and so decides on an abortion.
Under Issue One, she could. Arguably, given the extremely elastic definition of “health” that has been applied in abortion cases since Doe v. Bolton, having to raise a paraplegic child might be deemed inimical to maternal “health,” thus waiving the ostensible ban on post-viability abortions to which Issue One gives lip service. So, the mother could have an abortion.
So, could the child be a victim for purposes of the state’s prosecution of the shooter, but not a person for purposes of his mother’s abortion decision?
Last question: Is what the child suffered at the hands of the shooter an “injury” or “damages?” Persons suffer injuries; property suffers damages. Can Carlin be “injured” by being shot for purposes of compensation from the shooter’s estate but incapable of “injury” in terms of the decision to terminate the pregnancy that ends Carlin’s existence?
Or did the shooting only result in “damages,” in which case the damaged fetus is essentially chattel property?
Americans are concerned not just about mass shootings but a general rising crime wave. More and more Americans, especially in urban areas, are afraid outdoors. In that environment, crimes involving pregnant women and their unborn children cannot be excluded. Neither, then, can the criminal and tort aspects of those situations be ignored.
Many Americans are ambivalent about abortion. They instinctually feel uneasy about abortion-on-demand, but also hesitate to draw out the full implications of that reserve. The result is this kind of incoherence: can somebody be a “person” only sometimes? Is personhood a transitory, “it depends” quality?
Or do we recognize the inconsistencies such thinking nevertheless enmeshes us in, with real and serious legal consequences?
Because, six years after Sutherland Springs, we still have to answer the question: did 25 people die that day … or 26?
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With all due respect, Dr. Grondelski is grasping at straws.
We have murdered more than one *billion* babies around the world over the past half century. In the cruelest ways imaginable.
If that fact alone doesn’t cause us to recoil in horror, then why would a philosophical argument about personhood?
Those children are innocent, beautiful beings, infinitely loved by God. And we don’t give them a thought.
BTW, it’s American Catholics who have kept the blood-ravening Democrats in power for every single one of those 50 years, so we are responsible for a huge number those killings.
I think a change in philosophy or ideology is what moved us towards the abolition of slavery and it could work the same way for feticide.
Seeing the humanity in others is what’s critical. I’m not a huge fan of Harriet Beecher Stowe but that’s how her book made a difference.
I do not downplay the genocide America has committed against the unborn: I have no doubt that one day, Americans will look back on the Roe era like they look at slavery and ask “how could educated people have endorsed barbarity?” I have no doubt one day the pro-abortionists will be cancelled, like the traitors like Lee and the Southern insurrectionists. THAT SAID, this article is intended to ask people to consider the incoherence of how we act. We mourn the unborn child shot six years ago in a church while we head to the polls to enshrine further killing. Perhaps–assuming the Holy Spirit is not too busy “conversing” heresy — He may inspire some people to admit truth.
Oh dear, please don’t interject Robert E. Lee into the conversation.
Lee, Washington, secession from the North or Great Britain are a whole ‘nother discussion. Let’s focus on what unites us as Catholics today. There’s enough division going on.
Amen!
We mandate access to expensive healthcare to keep the aging aging and often to correct for unhealthy lifestyles that are lowering our immune systems resistance and disrupting normal bodily functions.
Yet for those with so much potential we allow on demand cutoff. There’s no pulling the plug out of mercy we’re cutting the cord out of inconvenience. We can’t blame just the mother the male is often demanding termination.
States like ours have had feticide laws enforced for years. Feticide is a crime here just like homicide is and charged by degree in the same way.
Until Roe was done away with though we had this bizarre situation where a “wanted ” child qualified under the law as a legitimate feticide victim but those who died in clinics were simply consigned to medical waste.
Thank you Donald Trump for making it possible for our state to be able to now enforce our laws for every single child:born, preborn, wanted or not. Being wanted doesn’t affect our worth or humanity. I hope Ohio figures that out too.
Mrscracker. You continue to be blinded by the darkness of Trump, the criminal.
A judge determined, with evidence he raped E. Jean Carroll. He has committed treason, Helsinki with Putin on the 2016 election violations discarding his DOI experts facts, At the WH with criminal Lavrov showing secret military documents, revealing the the Mar A Lago stolen Archived documents. No one has asked WHY he took the confidential documents?
He thrives on lying so much he and Fox News are in infecting your children and mine.
If he win the 2024 election he will pardon the treasonists jailed thugs the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys AND HIMSELF. WOW!
No small number of men bear responsibility for the deaths of their own children. Indeed, I would argue that men bear a lot of the responsibility for pushing women into abortions and pushing Roe as their escape clause for tomcat sex. That said, there are also men who bemoan a woman’s decision to kill the child for which he, too, is responsible, something Issue 1 would ensconce and something I have argued (alongside parental rights) that right to life ought to be pressing as a post-Dobbs argument. Danforth v. Planned Parenthood (striking down parental and spousal consent norms) was wrong and needs to be revisited by the states.
I remain pessimistic about the outcome of tomorrow’s vote in Ohio. The usual funding disparity between the two sides and media slant definitely exist here. Obviously, in this Republican dominated state a significant slice of voters who lean Republican favor legalized abortion. Many low information and low logic people who will say they support some restrictions on abortion will nevertheless vote “Yes” on this absolutist initiative. Chances for a pro-life victory are further diminished by the marijuana legalization initiative that is also on the ballot. Some stoners who otherwise would not have bothered to cast a ballot will in order to enshrine their recreational “right” to get high into law and, while they are at it, also vote “Yes” to allow unrestricted abortion. And, yes, there is almost no chance that the weed issue will fail.
The churches (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox) have mobilized to a large degree, however. If there is any chance of success, it will be due to this. Also, our mediocre governor, whose record is on the whole pretty uninspiring, is making some effort to defeat the measure. Finally, although it is not wise to read too much into it, I continue to be struck that the “No” yard signs outnumber “Yes” in my suburban neighborhood, which was formerly Republican, but has swung to the left in the last three election cycles. It probably just means that a lot of “Yes” people still are not comfortable advertising their support for infanticide.