Welcome to the moral Olympics, Dear Readers, where the latest event is deciding if babies belong in wombs or dumpsters. Clearly, when it comes to human life, nothing screams 'ethical clarity' like comparing a living human child to yesterday’s banana peel. And bonus points for the casual 'BTW' tossed in like it’s a footnote in a grocery list. Truly, the depths of this reasoning are breathtaking.

It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry (or both) at the sheer audacity of weighing children against garbage bins and calling it a 'take.' Yes, killing a child is apparently better than leaving it to live in the wild unknown of humanity. If morality is now a spectator sport, some people are playing with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and the results are… stunning.

Yes, clearly advocating for life-saving measures is just so radical these days. What has the world come to?!

At least in the 'babies in garbage bins' scenario, the baby is typically alive when thrown into one, meaning there’s still a chance to save them. Unlike with abortion. One scenario is tragic due to neglect; the other is a conscious decision to kill. Framing the two as morally equivalent is not just disingenuous, it’s downright absurd. One leaves room for rescue, the other closes that door permanently.

There is no official national statistic on how many infants are found in dumpsters in the U.S., but we can find some limited data on this. In one report for 2021, thirty-one infants (not all necessarily dumpster cases) were placed in dumpsters, backpacks, or other unsafe locations. Twenty-two were found deceased.

Recommended
The Intercept: Trump's Obsession With Somalia Isn't Just Racist, but Lethal Brett T. There’s a Movement for the Next Democrat Administration to Seize SpaceX, Starlink From Elon Musk Brett T.

A different recent study estimated a minimum of about eighty-five newborns per year are killed or left to die by a parent in the U.S., often in remote or unsafe locations, including trash but also woods, fields, etc. This isn’t limited to dumpsters, and the true number is likely higher given that many cases go unreported.

Now, let's compare this with the most recent data from the Guttmacher Institute on induced abortions: new data shows that in 2024 there were 1,038,100 clinician-provided abortions in the United States.

The ratio is roughly one unsafe abandoned infant per ~33,000 abortions. (31 abandoned infants ÷ 1,038,100 abortions ≈ 0.00003.)

That's a staggering figure.

The idea that ending a life deliberately could ever be framed as ‘better’ than giving a child a chance to live is morally upside-down, and yet here we are, scrolling through a world where people type this with a casual shrug and a ‘BTW.’

Not every commentor found this horrifying, there were some that added their own spin on what justifies killing the child in utero:

Not a single word of this justifies killing a child. What women are 'bleeding out in alleyways and parking lots?' Why are they not going to the emergency room if they are bleeding heavily? Hospital staff in every hospital in every state has a legal obligation to stabilize any patient that arrives at their doors regardless of ability to pay.

As for abuse? We will include resources at the end of this article for women in abusive and dangerous situations. Your child should motivate you to get out of that relationship, not to kill the child and stay in it.

It really seems like a very low bar, even with the current bar being, well, the garbage.

The logic just isn't logic-ing LOL

The shocking part? People read posts like this, shrug, and move on. Maybe it’s the casual tone, maybe it’s the normalization of reducing human life to a “BTW” afterthought. But it’s worth pausing: if the original post makes your stomach twist, congratulations—you still have a functioning moral compass. The world desperately needs more of that.

As mentioned before, there are AMPLE resources available to mothers, no matter their situation or circumstances:

These hotlines are confidential, free, and available any time — they can help with crisis support, safety planning, shelter connections, legal advocacy, and more: