Killing the unborn child

I know it is not very couth to make a political point off the back of a tragic murder, but the reporting to this story is an interesting example of a modern incoherence on the unborn infant. Here are some of the reports, chosen from news outlets traditionally thought of as being in some sense on the left.

Murdered woman's unborn baby dies

The unborn baby of a pregnant woman killed in a "completely random" street attack also died in the incident, police have confirmed. (BBC)

Tributes paid to pregnant woman who was fatally stabbed

53-year-old questioned over deaths of woman, 22, and unborn baby

Claire Wilson, 22, whose unborn baby also died, was attacked as she walked to work in Grimsby, north-east Lincolnshire, on Sunday afternoon. (Guardian)

Mother and unborn child die in stabbing

The unborn child of a woman stabbed and killed in a broad-daylight attack on Sunday died with its mother, police have confirmed. (Ind/Reuters)

I say that there is an incoherence because it is evidently newsworthy that the child died too. Those who argue the most vociferously for abortion must hold the line that an unborn child is no more important than an organ of the body: not something you would like to lose unnecessarily, but sometimes it has to be done. In fact, one might suggest that abortion advocates sometimes treat the embryo even more cavalierly than they do organs.

But in the context of a murder, it is not newsworthy that the victim's lung died: the lung, after all, does not have independent life or value. If its owner dies, it dies, and we think nothing of it. But if the killing of this unborn child is newsworthy, then are not other killings of unborn children also newsworthy?