A couple of days ago, I read with a little discomfort the headlines displayed on the frontpage of Straits Times --

Undergrad who dumped premature baby, LET OFF WITH STERN WARNING

From the contents of the article, which wasn't very informative to begin with, I gleaned the following;

Charges against the accused had been reduced from infanticide to concealment of dead body.

According to her lawyer, she had disposed a foetus, and not the corpse of a child, thus implying a distinct difference between the two, consequently implying it is wrong to throw away the corpse of a baby but not that of a foetus(?).

A gynaecologist from KK hospital said modern neo-natal technology would enable a foetus to live if it had been born between 25 - 28 weeks but anytime before 24 weeks, chances of survival would have been nil. Implication: Since discarded body was only 24 weeks old, it would not have survived birth anyway.

legal text indicates infanticide carries a life sentence. However, concealment of dead foetus is an offence only if it is 6 or 7 months old.

Being the inquisitive brat that I am, I did a little check on Yahoo and discovered from this website that a six-month old foetus has "some chance of survival depending on many factors." Since six months roughly works out to 24 weeks (that's four times six for the arithmetically-challenged), I would say there's something abit not right about what that KK doctor said.

I concede that scientific details differ vastly from one journal or text to another, and that the rate of development might differ from one foetus to another, for that matter. Therefore, determining whether throwing away a foetus which do not have the capacity to breathe and live (as opposed to a foetus which would be able to) is a crime is a subject of much controversy and debate, considering the many grey areas involved.

Yet, the judgment passed in this incident left me a tad puzzled. Honestly, I feel that the aforesaid girl shouldn't be let off so easily. The fact that she is an undergraduate (and a mature adult to boot) means that she possesses some sort of intelligence and powers of reasoning above that of the common lay-man; surely she knew that what she did was wrong at least, if not an outright crime. If she didn't want the baby, shouldn't she have gone for a proper abortion? And if she did want it, shouldn't she have called for an ambulance, like any other common-sense-wielding adult??? If discarding a foetus, literally down the chute or any other place, -- and be it capable of life or not -- had no repercussions, wouldn't that set a very disturbing precedent?

However, after all is said and done, who am I to judge and wave the flag of morality when I, myself, am far from being a model citizen?

 3:10 AM