Sara Warzecka Columnist

A tragedy recently made the news in the Tucson area. On March 1, Michael Coombs took his 2-month-old baby to the hospital when she wouldn't stop crying, only to find out it was his fault she was suffering. Doctors at Northwest Medical Center diagnosed the baby with shaken baby syndrome. She had to be disconnected from life support at the hospital on March 5. Since she died, police are now charging Coombs with first-degree murder.

Heartbreak such as this shows the extreme need for parental training prior to birth. Looking at some of our parents, we can certainly say they made more than a few mistakes in the process of raising us, but we are still alive. As young as parents can be nowadays ÷ Coombs is 18 ÷ it seems even more necessary that parents be taught just how fragile their children will be.

University Medical Center, where the baby was transferred for treatment, is the only Tucson hospital that has a shaken baby syndrome educational program. Awareness programs preventing infant injury should be mandatory for every parent and should be offered by every hospital.

Obviously, it's still horrible and stupid to shake a baby, but Coombs' girlfriend didn't give birth at UMC. Presumably, he had no idea his annoyed and impatient shaking would carry such dire consequences.

Such programs need advocates, but instead of protesting a lack of parental education, people object to abortion. Pro-lifers waste their effort protesting Roe v. Wade. What about devoting time to the babies who have already been born? I've never seen picketers protesting bad parents or lack of parental training during pregnancy.

The protesters say they are speaking for those who have no voice, but a month-old infant has no voice either. I find it appalling that these people, men and women alike, spend their time opposing the termination of unwanted pregnancies when already birthed babies are dying. We don't know in the scientific or religious sense if babies gain consciousness when only a fetus, but 2-month-olds are conscious enough to make the rest of the world coo and smile at their innocence.

When it comes to religious ethics or morals in general, many people seem to be more appalled by the practice of aborting a fetus than the fading smile of an infant. They need nothing more than the idea that the unborn child may be spiritually conscious or alive enough that the act constitutes murder in a spiritual sense.

Religious and moral pro-lifers need to keep their heads down here on Earth. Until they can prove definitively that the baby in the womb has the same level of consciousness as the baby in the Pampers commercial, I'll never understand why abortion deserves more outrage than living babies facing death.

And babies do die every day all over the world. Babies die in Iraq and Afghanistan, starve in Africa and poor homes around the world, suffer from abuse and mistreatment when they have no voice to ask for help. And babies die from shaken baby syndrome because their parents don't know any better. Why not protest this? Why not devote time, energy and religious vigor to the babies we can all watch in a hospital on life support?

Coombs' baby had to be put on life support because of brain damage, lack of oxygen in the brain and brain swelling, which, according to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, are all caused by shaking a baby. Hemorrhages may occur in one or both eyes. Many times, there is no visible evidence of the damage done by shaking a baby. Shaken baby syndrome eventually leads to death or severe neurological impairment. This is a much more cruel and violent fate than any legal abortion method, which many times involves only taking a pill so that the uterus will expel the fetus early on.

So why isn't there as much attention devoted to this atrocity as the removal of an unborn child? Perhaps that aborted child would have been killed through shaken baby syndrome by a parent who didn't know any better. Before anyone can demand that all pregnancies proceed naturally to child birth, people must first ensure that babies will be coming into a nurturing, accepting and educated world where they can laugh, cry and thrive without facing dangers such as shaken baby syndrome.

Sara Warzecka thinks the moral majority should put a sock in it or pick a worthy cause. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.