Rep. Jessica Ferrar, Another 'Catholic'

Politician Gone Wrong

(Posted 05/16/09 www.RemnantNewspaper.com) Opponents of legal abortion have always said it was a slippery slope. Legalize abortion, and euthanasia would follow. This, of course, is exactly what has happened, for instance, in Oregon. Barely a day passes when we don’t read a newspaper story about the merits of fetal stem cell research or cloning. And now a Catholic legislator in Texas, with a 100 percent rating from the National Abortion Rights Action League, wants to make infanticide a mere jail offense.

State Rep. Jessica Farrar, whose website touts her award from Planned Parenthood, the abortion industry’s leading killer of the unborn, is ready to bring the abortion movement to its penultimate success. Farrar thinks a mother who murders her infant, if less than 12 months old, should spend no more than two years in jail and perhaps even less. The culprit might get a $10,000 fine. All mother has to do is prove she suffered postpartum depression or some other mental disorder.

In March, Farrar introduced H.B. 3318, which says

A person commits an offense if the person willfully by an act or omission causes the death of a child to whom the person gave birth within the 12-month period preceding the child’s death and if, at the time of the act or omission, the person’s judgment was impaired as a result of the effects of giving birth or the effects of lactation following the birth.

The bill, which awaits action in the Calendars Committee of the Texas House of Representatives, would thus reduce infanticide from being a capital offense punishable by death to a state jail felony.

Farrar says the notorious child murderer Andrea Yates inspired her to reconsider her hard-line position on murdering babies — at least the ones who escape the long knives and skull-crushing forceps of her friends at Planned Parenthood. Yates, you will recall, is the murderess who drowned five of her children in the bathtub. Her guilty verdict was overturned by reason of insanity.

 “When the Andrea Yates case happened, honestly, I thought she should be thrown under the prison,” Farrar told the Austin-American Statesman. “But then I came to learn more about what the condition was ... when you're looking at culpability, you have to consider the mental state, and that mental state was caused by hormones that were triggered by the pregnancy.”

Yates’ attorney agrees. A “civilized” nation, he says, would recognize mental illness as a mitigating factor in infanticide. “It’s something every civilized country has on the books,” George Parnham told The Dallas Morning News, noting that the public must be educated on post-partum depression.

David Haynes, the attorney for child murderer Dena Schlosser, who hacked off her child’s arms with a kitchen knife, agrees. Farrar’s bill, he told the Morning News, “recognizes the great stress that some mothers are under when they suffer from postpartum depression.” Schlosser and Yates, appropriately enough, were roommates during their short term in the nuthouse.

Farrar admits that her bill isn’t likely to pass; nothing has happened on it since April 28. But getting as far as she has is “pretty significant.” Indeed it is. If Farrar gets her way, women with the “effects of lactation,” whatever they are, can murder their children and spend 24 months or less in the county slammer. One can only hope a shortage of nursing pads doesn’t qualify as one of the effects.

That a legislator of Farrar’s sinister, anti-Catholic ideology would introduce such a bill is no surprise. She also thinks Catholic hospitals should be forced to dispense information about what she and her ilk euphemistically call “emergency contraception,” the fancy name for the mega-load of birth control pills a woman takes “the morning after,” when she wakes in a perfect stranger’s bed. Naturally, Farrar and her pro-abortion confreres always discuss this pill in terms of rape. She is, again, bosom buddies with NARAL Planned Parenthood.

That said, one Catholic blogger, enraged about Farrar’s bill, discloses that Farrar not only shows up at Mass to receive communion but also has served as Eucharistic minister. Some Catholics might wonder whether Farrar has been excommunicated latae sententiae, and, beyond that, why parish priests continue permitting infamous Catholics such as Vice President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. John Kerry and their ilk to receive Holy Communion.

The answer, in a word, is fear, but that is a discussion for another day. It suffices to say that Farrar’s bishop, Daniel Cardinal DiNardo, should tell her to cease and desist her manifest, grave sin or face the consequences under Canon 915. He need not “discuss” anything with her, as bishops so often want to do. But he must be as firm with Farrar as he has been with Notre Dame on the matter of President Obama’s forthcoming commencement address on May 17. DiNardo knows what to do. His spokesman said he would not comment on the bill or Farrar.

Until then, pray for the bishops, for the reawakening of Farrar’s faith and for the success of the legislators who oppose these outrages. Then, pray for the children. This is, again, only Farrar’s penultimate success. The next step down the slope is removing any penalty for infanticide. After that, it’s full legalization.
 

R. Cort Kirkwood, a columnist for The Remnant, last wrote about Catholic colleges.

He is the author of Real Men: Ten Courageous Americans To Know And Admire.