CV NEWS FEED // Word on Fire has published an article responding to the Kate Cox abortion story, arguing for the importance of recognizing the inherent dignity and personhood of each human being from the moment of conception until natural death.
Political science expert Kody Cooper wrote the December 19 article, titled “Personhood and Dignity: The Cox Case.” Cooper is the father of a child who died of Trisomy 18, the same condition with which Cox’s unborn child was diagnosed.
In his essay, Cooper argued that the personhood and dignity of an unborn child “does not hinge upon its physiological dependency,” and the “idea that physiological dependency equates to nonpersonhood is a performativist vision of personhood.”
He explained that a performativist vision “depends upon a subject’s immediate capacity to perform some action. Some performativists draw the line at ‘feeling pain’; others at ‘viability’.”
He criticized such lines as “arbitrary,” arguing instead that human beings, by their very nature, are human persons from “the moment of conception.”
Cooper gave a hypothetical example to highlight the danger in the performativist view. “Suppose a hypothetical in which a mother sued Texas for permission to abort her four-year-old child, who had been sick for about five months and was diagnosed with an extremely life-limiting and very often fatal genetic condition,” Cooper wrote.
“And suppose that caring for the child had been, and would continue to be, acutely physically and emotionally taxing in a way that posed some risk to future fertility,” he wrote. “Most of us would agree that it would be morally insane eugenicism for her to contract the killing of her child in that instance.”
“The principal difference of the real case from my hypothetical is that Kate’s child is physiologically dependent upon her in a particular way that all unborn children at twenty weeks gestation are,” Cooper pointed out. He further argued that “physiological dependency makes no difference as to the moral status of any unborn child, including Kate’s.”
Doctors informed Texas resident Kate Cox in November that her unborn baby likely had Trisomy 18, a condition that often quickly takes the lives of those who suffer it. Cox sought an abortion with the legal assistance of the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights.
“Meanwhile, Kate was at increased risk for various ailments mothers of trisomy babies experience, including increased risk of gestational diabetes and hypertension,” wrote Cooper.
He also referenced Cox’s own reasoning for wanting an abortion. Cox said:
It is not a matter of if I will have to say goodbye, but when. I do not want to continue until my baby dies in my belly or I have to deliver a stillborn baby or one where life will be measured in hours or days. . . . I do not want my baby to arrive in this world only to watch her suffer a heart attack or suffocation.
After several court hearings, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that because Cox’s life was not in immediate danger from the pregnancy, she could not legally obtain an abortion in Texas.
“Cox has since gone out of state to obtain an abortion, presumably a dilation and evacuation procedure,” wrote Cooper.
“I personally can empathize with the pain that Kate Cox and her husband Justin are going through, for my wife and I are also parents of a Trisomy 18 baby.”
“It was New Year’s Eve 2020, when the doctors diagnosed my unborn son with Trisomy 18,” Cooper wrote. “Bosco Joseph Paul Cooper was stillborn into my wife’s arms on April 20, 2021.”
“I thus understand well the pain that the Coxes are going through because I’ve been there. So does my wife, whose powerful testimony can be read here,” Cooper continued. “But I cannot agree with their framing of the issue. Nor can I agree that they have a moral or legal right to contract the killing of their child.”
“Doubtless neither Kate nor Justin wanted their baby to suffer a heart attack or suffocation. Neither did my wife nor I,” Cooper stated:
But it simply does not follow that violently dismembering a baby of five-month gestational age with Trisomy 18 in the womb is the compassionate alternative to bringing him to term, even when a form of suffering arising from his genetic condition is foreseeable.
“I do not cast any aspersion upon the Coxes nor do I call for any criminal penalties,” Cooper wrote, adding that his “assumption is that the abortion industry is using Kate’s tragic situation to advance their own political agenda, and accordingly have not explained to them the gruesome reality of a D&E abortion, instead making a vague Orwellian promise of ‘medical care.’”
Readers can find Cooper’s full article here.
