The future for girls in George W. Bush's "culture of life"

We can expect to see more of this:

When her newborn was found crying at the bottom of an air shaft earlier this week, the baby's teenage mother was charged with trying to kill the child.

But after the decaying body of a second infant was found in the same place, the authorities trying to unravel the gruesome story said it took an even more tragic turn: The teenager told them that her own father was the father of both babies.

The mother, a high school junior, was accused on Tuesday of throwing her newborn son into an air shaft from the third-story window of her apartment in West New York.

The boy survived, landing on a trash pile at the bottom, and residents called the police after hearing his cries.

When the investigators went to the building a second time, they found in the same pile of garbage the remains of the second infant - a girl believed to have died more than a year ago.

Prosecutors said when they first interviewed the young mother, she told them that the infants were fathered by different men. But in a second round of interviews on Thursday, the girl said her father was the children's father.

Gaetano T. Gregory, the Hudson County first assistant prosecutor, said investigators must wait for DNA tests before determining the baby's paternity, but they believe the girl's account.

The events of Thursday night "provide public closure to the tragedy of abuse, which has affected three generations," Mr. Gregory said on Friday.

The young mother was charged with attempted murder and aggravated assault. The baby boy was being treated in a hospital for a skull fracture and other injuries. On Friday, the mother was charged with murder in the death of the other infant.

The names of the girl and her father were withheld because the girl is considered the victim of a sex crime.

Prosecutors said the girl would be tried in juvenile court on the murder charge because she was not 18 when the death took place. She was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation on Friday.

In adult court, the murder charge would carry a sentence of 30 years to life; Mr. Gregory said it would most likely be less for a conviction in juvenile court. The attempted murder charge carries a sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison.

The father was charged with aggravated sexual assault, endangering the welfare of a child and child abuse. If convicted, he could face 10 to 20 years in prison on the most serious charge. He was being held in the Hudson County Correctional Center.

Here we have a girl who has borne not one but two children through being raped by her own father. She's lucky she wasn't 18, or she might never see the light of day again.

This is what "parental consent" laws mean in real life. We'd all like to believe that all families are normal, and that parents want what's best for their children. But then we have families like this one, in which a father impregnates his own daughter twice -- and now SHE's the one who has to pay. Note the difference in the potential sentences between the two crimes. Imagine the consequences to this girl of having an abortion, when her own father was perfectly OK with seeing her walking around carrying HIS baby.

I'm sorry, folks...I know what she did is wrong, but if sexual assault (and no matter what the circumstances were, it's assault) by her father isn't a mitigating circumstance, I don't know what is.