The truth is in the comments

Note: This blog entry has some graphic details. Read at your own risk.

The crime is too recent to have the full story, but what appears to have happened is that a woman in Tigard saw a posting online from a girl who was 9 months pregnant, and the woman wanted her baby, so she lured the girl to her house. She planned on coaxing the girl to hand over her baby, and even started out on building her alibi, spontaneously telling people she was pregnant so it wouldn't look weird when she suddenly had a baby.

When the girl came over, this woman tried to coax her into inducing labor (and may or may not have succeeded), and in any case got the baby out of her, then calmly killed the woman and stuffed her corpse under her house. The baby, not yet fully developed, was either never fully alive or died shortly after it was removed. The woman called her boyfriend and had him come over and help her bring the baby back to life. When he was unable to revive the baby, she called the police, saying it was her baby and she needed help, despite showing no signs of pregnancy, no record of having a baby, and a dead body under her house.

There is no ambiguity here. This woman, the reason doesn't matter, was not human. She was severely damaged beyond repair, she is beyond reprieve, and there is no chance that she will ever see free soil again. It's possible that she doesn't even care. At the very least, she will get life in prison for first degree murder of the mother. Then the prosecutors mentioned that if they can determine that the baby was at one point independently alive, it would qualify as a person and they could pin second-degree infanticide on her as well.

The first comments on the news report were fairly straightforward. Condolences to the victim and her family, disgust at the perpetrator. Then a couple people mentioned in passing how awful it was that they were calculating the charges on whether the baby was ever a person. One person casually states that the case makes her want to leave Oregon.

Then the floodgates open.

The pro-choicers come out against the commenter for making it political. The pro-lifers come out against the pro-choicers for not caring about the baby. The Democrats come out against pro-lifers for using the case to push their agenda. The religious conservatives come out against the Democrats for being heartless liberals. Soon everyone commenting have reduced the discussion to saying the other side are all going to hell. Nobody shows remorse for the victim anymore; the only mention of the original article is that everyone states that anyone who disagrees with them are just as bad as the psychotic murderer.

Eventually, someone from the family of the deceased have the misfortune of reading the comments on the page. A mere three and a half hours after the news is released, an acquaintance of the dead adds a comment expressing their anguish. The response is almost immediate:

heathers kin:
Most everyone would feel the same way in your position. I know I
would.

That said...

...and the debate continues. It quickly devolves into people citing statistics on the percentages of pro-lifers vs. pro-choice. Demographics on the death penalty. Geography of crimes in Multnomah County. Rights vs. Suppression of Free Speech. Within less than 28 hours, the conversation thread has devolved into calculating the margin of victory of President Obama.

The only mention remaining of the original tragedy is each side of each argument accusing the other of putting their own political agenda over the death of this poor, poor girl, whom they then use as an instance in furthering their own agenda. Commenters open with a suggestion that all dissenting opinions be removed from the website, then conclude with the pre-emptive accusation that the other side will attempt to suppress them, thus proving their point, whatever that point will be.

Well, now I'll add my two cents to the argument, because let's face it, I'm not better than any of you. I don't even know this woman, and it doesn't affect my life in any way that she's dead. My life is made worse from knowing that this psychotic killer even exists, but even the article itself points to how naive and gullible the victim was, literally to a fault. I do what I can to protect myself, and I assure you that the killer is not that difficult to outwit. Given my personal opinion, I would suggest that she be put promptly to death, and I would suggest keeping a close eye on her two kids—she's surely fucked them up by now.

Now, as far as the other politics: abortion rights, free speech, death penalty in general... I just watched the social discourse, in the span of just one day, completely forget that there's anything wrong with what happened last week. To some degree, every single one of us saw this event as an opportunity. A chance for us to make the world a little better for ourselves. And our anger is not directed at the psycotic baby-killer who caused this, but at our fellow commenters, who have commited the far worse crime of diagreeing with us.

I'm going to say that again in its own paragraph: at our basest level, we consider diversity of thought to be a greater evil than carving a baby out of an innocent woman and tossing her corpse under a house.

Now we know how tragedies like this come to pass. Evidently we have more important things to worry about.