You Can’t Split the Baby.

Last week, during a House of Delegates floor debate over a pro-life bill, SB 163, Delegate Marcus Simon (D-Fairfax) committed a cringe-worthy gaffe that I believe warrants our attention. When speaking to oppose the bill that would prohibit surrogacy contracts from being able to require a woman to have an abortion or “selective reduction” – or conversely, from prohibiting her from having an abortion (a provision tacked on by Senate Democrats as a compromise to pass the bill) – Delegate Simon described SB 163 as a “troublesome bill that tries to split the baby.”

Quickly recognizing his verbal faux pas within the context of literally splitting babies apart by tearing them out of the womb limb from limb through abortion, Del. Simon displayed a rare moment of genuine remorse and shame, in which he apologized profusely. You can see it for yourself HERE.

While we all can (and should) be gracious to Del. Simon for his self-admittedly “inept” comment that was clearly not intended to cause offense, nevertheless, we should not miss this opportunity to recognize the incredible irony of his words, but even more so, the true irony of his apology and what it reveals about the human heart.     

Some might call Simon’s remark a “Freudian slip” (i.e. an unintentional error regarded as revealing subconscious feelings). Others may see it as a moment of divinely-directed irony, designed to make plain to all, in a simple turn of phrase, the grotesqueness of abortion for which the speaker and his political party champions. Or, maybe it really was just an awkwardly-timed expression of a commonly-used Biblical idiom, taken from the famous story of King Solomon recorded in 1 Kings 3:16-28, about a dispute between two women each claiming a newborn baby belonged to them (a story which Del. Simon, being Jewish, almost certainly knows).  

The moral of that famous story (and hence, the age-old saying “split the baby”), of course, rests upon Solomon’s wisdom in recognizing something that every person listening knew instinctively: You can’t split the baby.

Solomon’s offering to each alleged mother just half of the disputed baby (by ordering his guard to cut the child in two with a sword) could not be accomplished without necessarily ending the child’s life, and he knew that having a dead child could not satisfy either woman, but especially not the child’s true mother, whose love for and bond with the child God Himself put into her.  Solomon, like everyone who hears the story from nearly 3,000 years ago down to this very day, understood that killing a baby was wrong and that doing so would not solve anyone’s problems; it would only cause more heartache. It is this very premise that makes the story so compelling and which shows Solomon’s wisdom.

But Solomon also understood another important truth: That the human heart is sure to reveal the truth of the matter when it comes to something so basic as preserving the life of an innocent child. And as the story goes, that’s exactly what happened. The real mother begged the king to give her baby to the other woman rather than kill him, revealing her heart to be that of a true mother. Meanwhile, the other woman remained silent because of her lie and then eventually told the king to “Go ahead and cut him in half. Then neither of us will have the baby”, demonstrating her hardness of heart even to the point of advocating for the killing of a helpless baby (while clearly revealing her knowledge that this was, indeed, a baby).  

And so here, we see essentially the same theme play out with Delegate Marcus Simon, the de facto spokesperson for the Democratic caucus on the House floor. In his raw display of open shame, which prompted an instinctual (and sincere) apology, he was actually revealing the truth of the matter (and his knowledge thereof) when it comes to preserving the lives of innocent children. As Solomon also famously stated, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

The key to ascertaining this point is by asking the question: Why did Del. Simon feel so compelled to apologize in that moment for what he had said? After all, splitting apart a human baby is precisely what takes place in every elective abortion. Delegate Simon surely knows this, and at the same time he shows no indication of backing away from defending that very practice in every conceivable scenario (Note: My double meaning is intended).  

What really brought Del. Simon open shame was that he accidentally uttered the evil reality of what abortion does, a truth which he and his party members work so carefully to avoid ever stating or openly acknowledging.

The fact that Del. Simon was so embarrassed to have uttered words to describe what actually happens during an abortion confirms that he really does know, since God has written it on his heart, what everyone has always known all along: That you cannot kill a baby and think it’s going to be alright.  

But there is still one more issue that bears addressing here. Someone may be thinking: But Del. Simon was speaking about unborn children, whereas the story of Solomon involved a newborn child outside the womb. So, the analysis is not the same, right?

Well, setting aside for a moment that there is no meaningful moral distinction between a baby inside the womb and one who has just been born, this year Del. Simon and all 47 of his House Democrat colleagues also voted against HB 304, a bill that seeks to ensure that a child born alive after a failed abortion attempt will be provided with life-sustaining medical care. Those who voted against this bill sent a very emphatic message: If you don’t succeed in splitting the baby, then just leave it to die on the table.  Listen to what Delegate Nick Freitas had to say about that on the House floor HERE.

Going forward, we are duty-bound to ensure that the law of the land affirms what we all know to be true in the real world – that we simply cannot “split the baby,” any baby, ever. As we know, babies cannot speak up for themselves, so we must courageously and resiliently do it for them. And as we do it, we must also pray that God would convict the hearts of those who seek to avoid confronting the evil they know in their hearts is wrong.