Cops: Texas teen tried to flush newborn

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Maybe we should flush the Bible down the toilet.:hmm:



"Those who lead children astray should be dropped off a cliff with a millstone around their neck." (Mark 9:42)
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:


Death is death, but you do realize our society has different categories of murder don't you?

Has one person said anything about this not being a crime?

Man you really read into things...:eyebrow:

Hardly. Has anyone here even referred to this as a crime? When we refer to what happened as "death" as opposed to murder, when we equate whatever tragic upbringing this girl may (or may not) have had, it's pretty clear that this girl's problem is ours too.
 
financeguy said:
Maybe we should flush the Bible down the toilet.:hmm:

[q]"Those who lead children astray should be dropped off a cliff with a millstone around their neck." (Mark 9:42)[/q]


Talk about missing the point.
 
nathan1977 said:


Hardly. Has anyone here referred to this as a crime? When we refer to what happened as "death" as opposed to murder, when we equate whatever tragic upbringing this girl may (or may not) have had, it's pretty clear that this girl's problem is ours too.



what are you looking for here? are you just trying to further your suspicion that pro-choice people don't care about babies, not even born ones?
 
nathan1977 said:


Hardly. Has anyone here even referred to this as a crime?

VintagePunk said:
Wouldn't it be in society's best interest to find out the root cause of this, and try to rehabilitate her to prevent her from performing another crime down the road?

So, again, do we simply lock up these girls and throw away the key, or will trying to look at causes perhaps prevent this in the future?
 
I do feel badly for these 14 year old girls. Due to their actions of having sex at that age, they are looking for something in their lives but all in the wrong place. The end result is the baby...also at 14 you know by this age that killing something a baby, person, dog, cat etc. is wrong. In both cases the girls did have an alternative and I don't mean clinics or anything like that, all they had to do was leave the infants in the bathrooms.
 
nathan1977 said:

What :huh:

nathan1977 said:

Has anyone here even referred to this as a crime? When we refer to what happened as "death" as opposed to murder, when we equate whatever tragic upbringing this girl may (or may not) have had, it's pretty clear that this girl's problem is ours too.

So that's all you want, someone to refer to this as a crime? It's pretty implied, don't you think?
 
Irvine511 said:




what are you looking for here? are you just trying to further your suspicion that pro-choice people don't care about babies, not even born ones?

Wow. There's a straw man for you. I don't even think that, and would much less imply it, but whatever helps you keep your stereotype.

This is a cut and dried case of murder -- whatever the motivation -- but no one wants to refer to it as such. No one even wants to refer to it as a crime. The safer word is "tragedy," but tragedy implies something that couldn't be helped. The flushing of a living baby down a toilet certainly could. So what are we left to do? When murder is justifiable, we are pretty far down a slippery slope, don't you think?
 
VintagePunk said:




So, again, do we simply lock up these girls and throw away the key, or will trying to look at causes perhaps prevent this in the future?

Are the two mutually exclusive? I'm not saying that an investigation shouldn't be done into the girl's home life. What I am saying is that a poor home life (if that is the case, which no one here knows) is no justification for murder.
 
nathan1977 said:

This is a cut and dried case of murder --
And like I asked before, you do realize society has different classifications of murder, don't you?

nathan1977 said:

The safer word is "tragedy," but tragedy implies something that couldn't be helped. The flushing of a living baby down a toilet certainly could. So what are we left to do? When murder is justifiable, we are pretty far down a slippery slope, don't you think?

How does "tragedy" imply something that couldn't be helped? Man talk about a stretch.
 
VintagePunk said:


Maybe this girl has had an "utter lack of humanity" inflicted upon her throughout her short life, and that's the only sort of behaviour she knows.


I think that's part of the overall point, and what everyone else is saying as far as I can tell. The point is to get to the root causes of such a tragic situation so that it won't happen, as much as that is possible within our human intelligence and emotional capabilities. Of course what was done to that baby is horrific beyond words, but what good is it ever going to do to focus on that alone? She's a 14 year old girl and I'd prefer to give her the benefit of the doubt that she is a reasonably decent human being caught in a situation that she could not even begin to contend with- or she would never do such a thing. Fourteen year olds shouldn't be having sex, at all, ever in my personal view-but they do so we must deal with that.

It's not an excuse, it's an attempt to place it in a context that can possibly lead to some understanding, discussion, and prevention. It IS our problem, so that's why we have to do that.

It breaks my heart that that 14 year old girl seemingly had no one to turn to in that situation, and I hardly think that makes me some sort of monster who doesn't care about that baby. I care about that baby very much and that breaks my heart just as much. Who is saying it is justifiable? That's a leap from trying to understand her whole situation that might have led to this, as a means to prevent it and as our social responsibility. Maybe she had a great family life and great communication with her parents and just decided to do that anyway as an out for her situation-but I would think not. Possible but not as probable.
 
nathan1977 said:


Wow. There's a straw man for you. I don't even think that, and would much less imply it, but whatever helps you keep your stereotype.



you'd fail to say what it is you really want from all this, so what else was there to assume?


This is a cut and dried case of murder -- whatever the motivation -- but no one wants to refer to it as such. No one even wants to refer to it as a crime. The safer word is "tragedy," but tragedy implies something that couldn't be helped. The flushing of a living baby down a toilet certainly could. So what are we left to do? When murder is justifiable, we are pretty far down a slippery slope, don't you think?


who on earth is justifying this? who on earth is saying this *isn't* a crime?

you're like Tim Russert berating Obama about Louis Farakkhan. do you condemn? do you condemn and repudiate? do you condemn and repudiate and distance yourself?

what more do you want?
 
MrsSpringsteen said:
It IS our problem, so that's why we have to do that.



i think this gets to the heart of the matter.

i don't think this girl murdered her baby in cold blood in the way that, say, Susan Smith drowned her kids in the bathtub (or was she the one with the lake?) this doesn't seem like a psychotic episode, this doesn't seem like she got angry at the baby and shook it really hard like that British Nanny. it doesn't seem like she ran up to a random baby in a stroller and took it out and bashed it's head out on the sidewalk.

i feel like i have some measure of responsibility to the girl. i feel like she's been failed on so many levels, and it's the baby who has suffered for it. yes, i do see two victims here, though only one murderer.

if this girl had contraception or felt as if she were able to make choices -- abortion, adoption, whatever -- this situation could have been easily avoided.

her age has much to do with it. as we've discussed in here, the vast majority of the tiny percentage of abortions that are late term abortions are usually done when a baby develops debilitating birth defects, or when the mother is very young and has been in denial about the pregnancy.

this is something that needs to be understood in order to prevent. anger and outrage aren't going to go very far to address the situation.
 
nathan1977 said:
Has anyone here even referred to this as a crime?

What I said was, "these girls must be made to take responsibility for their actions."

Of course it was a crime.

But it is not a crime to have compassion for a fourteen year old girl who has obviously fallen through the cracks.
 
nathan1977 said:


Are the two mutually exclusive? I'm not saying that an investigation shouldn't be done into the girl's home life. What I am saying is that a poor home life (if that is the case, which no one here knows) is no justification for murder.

Actually, and sorry BVS!, it may not (I personally don't think it so) be a justification for/of murder, but gaols are full of people who were led on a path toward where they are today. Outside gaol there are billions of us who are where we are today because of where our path led us. Is it justification? I don't like to think so. I don't think justification can fairly be used in a murder case, and certainly not this one. So it's not justified, it's certainly not inevitable, but it surely is something which needs addressing. Do you have intractables in your country? I'm sure you do. I was recently looking through the histories/stories/case studies of some of our delightful 'tracs' and what happened to them over the courses of their lives. Largely speaking, you simply do not just 'end up' in a supermax. You don't just 'end up' killing someone under any circumstances unless it was an absolute accident. This girl did not accidentally kill her baby. She most certainly didn't just 'end up' killing the newborn either. I know you're not saying that, but an understanding of what led her to do this is incredibly important in any judgement on this as a criminal matter.
 
nathan1977 said:
What I am saying is that a poor home life (if that is the case, which no one here knows) is no justification for murder.

So do you want to put the millstone around her neck or would you rather drop her off the cliff?
Would this satisfy you and settle the matter?
 
Angela Harlem said:


Actually, and sorry BVS!, it may not (I personally don't think it so) be a justification for/of murder, but gaols are full of people who were led on a path toward where they are today.

Why do you apologize to me?
 
Because you were building up a great case of there being no argument that any of this has ever been justified (and by people in this thread), and I kinda hinted that while there might not be justification, per se, there was certainly room for an understanding... Or something.
:wink:
 
Angela Harlem said:
Because you were building up a great case of there being no argument that any of this has ever been justified (and by people in this thread), and I kinda hinted that while there might not be justification, per se, there was certainly room for an understanding... Or something.
:wink:

Ok, I gotcha...

But actually that was part of my point, and I apologize for not making that clear. I do think there is a clear distinction between justification and understanding... And I was hoping Nathan answered a few more questions because that's where I was driving at... Unfortunately he didn't so I never got to finish my thought process...
 
OK, OK, someone help me out here, because I'm clearly missing something.

As far as I can tell from the article (and, mind you, reading comprehension isn't my strong suit), this girl CHOSE not to tell anyone about her pregnancy. CHOSE. She wasn't abandoned, she wasn't alone in this fucked up world, basically, we're just taking guesses at her situation based on the final product - flushing a baby down the toilet and killing it.

I think those rushing to make sense of this and attempting to give it context are missing the simple fact that the information given isn't enough to guess at what her home life may be or her mental state, since her parents weren't even mentioned and there weren't any reports from friends about her behavior prior to the incident. Furthermore, those wishing for her to be hung for this are also off-base for the same reasons. I can't believe you people were able to wring 4 pages of discussion out of that vague little article. As far as any of you know, she was just some irresponsible little girl who didn't want to get in trouble with her parents and also didn't want to get an abortion. I guess you could just claim it's common sense that she was mentally ill, abused, or neglected, but I'd like to have some actual evidence before jumping to conclusions. :shrug:
 
I think you'd find statistically that it is highly unlikely she is simply cold blooded and without regard for her actions. To automatically assume she is an ordinary and rational 14 year old is not really a logical conclusion.
 
I didn't say she was. Otherwise I'd be on nathan1977's side in all this. I just think it's equally unfair to start waving the finger at her homelife/parents when we know nothing about it/them at all.

My guess is that she was a girl who led a relatively normal life but was likely imbalanced as it was, and did what she based did on fear and panic alone. I've known girls in this situation, and logic kind of goes out the window.
 
I think years of research into what builds up to someone killing another shows anything but some ideal home life is a prevalent aspect of their background. I'm not sure what girls you are familiar with, but I do have to ask are they pregnant/post natal, teenagers to boot, and in circumstances which would likely lead them to flush a newborn down a toilet? I do think this goes beyond even a good understanding of teenagers in general, or even the scared and somewhat rash ones.
 
Nope, I've honestly never known anyone rash enough to do that, even when pretty overwhelmed. I can't even picture a good reason for doing something like that. It's too awful.
 
I can't imagine that anyone who goes through nine months of pregnancy not telling anyone at all and carefully concealing it, strolls off to school in the throes of labor as if everything's normal, then proceeds to head for a bathroom stall when she feels the baby coming down the birth canal is in their right state of mind. All of that is bizarre, self-destructive, and extremely risky behavior. If an adult woman living on her own did the same thing only minus harming the baby afterwards, I'd say the baby should be taken into protective custody immediately and the woman should be taken to a mental health professional immediately.
 
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