More Brilliance from James Taranto

Here in its entirety is a wonderful post from Opinion Journal's Best of the Web:

"The first woman charged in Wyoming for allegedly using methamphetamine while she was pregnant is back in jail for an alleged drug violation," the Associated Press reports from Riverton, Wyo.:

Michelle Ann Foust, 31, was jailed last Wednesday when a urine sample allegedly showed the presence of methamphetamine, which would violate the terms of her bond agreement.

Just five days earlier, Foust was in court for a preliminary hearing on a charge of child endangerment. She was arrested last October shortly after she gave birth to a son after blood tests allegedly showed both Foust and the infant had meth in their bloodstreams. . . .

The American Civil Liberties Union has criticized Fremont County Attorney Ed Newell for bringing the case. Foust's attorney, Gordon Ellis, said the law shouldn't apply to Foust because a fetus is not a child.

A fetus is not a child. This story encapsulates how pro-abortion absolutism has warped American liberalism. Perhaps liberalism's greatest virtue is its professed concern for the most helpless and vulnerable members of society. But here we have the ACLU, the premier liberal organization, taking the position that we have to tolerate what amounts to (alleged) child abuse in the name of dehumanizing the "fetus."

Liberalism also claims to respect science. But what scientific basis can there be for the claim that "a fetus is not a child"? It's a defensible distinction if the question is whether abortion is permissible early in pregnancy, but as a biological matter, at some point a "fetus" becomes capable of surviving on his own and thus indistinguishable from a child by any criterion except location.

To say "a fetus is not a child" is to say that the act of birth somehow instantly transforms a mere clump of cells into a human being. If that is true, then birth really is a miracle--and Ed Newell is a creationist.

And these guys think Christians cling to absurd old beliefs?