For those of you who need a refresher course on Scott Peterson
I just read the article, but I just want to make sure I’ve got it exactly right. She was 8 months pregnant, and they’d already named the child/foetus/whatever?
Yes.
The way I remember it, the news never referred to the baby as Connor until the bodies were found and her family said that was the named she had chosen for a boy. I could be very wrong in my memory, and it’s not a hugely crucial point…the difference between “Picking out a name for their future baby” and “naming a baby” seems to be pretty slim.
Probably one person. I have my doubts that even a newborn is actually a person (too blank), much less an 8 month fetus.
I voted 2 people, Laci and Connor, for two reasons. First, a baby born at 8 months is likely to survive, and be as much a person as any other newborn. Second, the parents had already named him, and so I’m quite content to use the name, and not refer to him as “a viable foetus”.
I understand the moral question whether one or two people were killed, but I’m not sure what the moral distinction is between killing a nameless person and one with a name. Am I missing something there?
I’m not going to vote because none of your options seem exactly right to me.
Generally in this situation I think the answer is one - Laci Peterson; however, I think when you’re talking about a specific situation the intent of the killer becomes important.
For instance, hubby and I are about 9 months pregnant (yah, yah, I have to bring this up in EVERY FRIGGIN’ THREAD).
We have selected a name, we have decorated the nursery, we have chosen which outfits Junior will have at the hospital and which he will be wearing home, we have pictures of him framed (ultrasounds), hubby has been reading him stories through my belly button.
At this point, if hubby decides to off me - person 1, I think he’s also deciding to off Junior - person 2, because he has been interacting with Junior as if he’s an actual person - his intent would be to kill his wife AND his son, although I recognize that the law does not see it that way.
I voted two, and I’ll try and articulate why as best I can.
It has nothing to do with my feelings on whether a fetus is a person or not, I think it has more to do with the emotional connection Scott Peterson must have had with the fetus. If they had picked out a name, if she was eight months pregnant, he must surely have been very, very aware that he was killing both his wife and their unborn child.
If the fetus was at maybe 2 or 3 months, maybe I’d have voted differently, maybe not. That man knew he was killing his wife and a person-who-was-a-very-short-time-away-from-being-a-person. That basically means two people to me.
Gosh I hope that made sense.
Edit: alice_in_wonderland just said pretty much what I was trying to say here.
Two, because that’s what he was convicted of. And Connor, because he had a name.
I just discussed this with hubby and gave him the hypothetical situation where I pissed him off so much that he decided to kill me. He confirmed my suspicions that he would consider it killing 2 people - both Junior and me.
He also looked at me like I was on crack when I asked him.
Uh oh. Start taping his phone calls. Now!
What about me? Most of the stuff you posted is also true for us with one exception: my pregnancy is only barely beyond the age of viability.
I think it was two, Lacy and a viable fetus (though, since she did have a name picked out, I have no problem referring to him as Connor). I think emotional attachment, or whatever, is largely irrelevant. What if Ben didn’t give a shit about our baby (who has a name and daily interaction and whatever), resented me for “getting knocked up”, and tried to convince me to get an abortion? You can’t claim there’s a bond there but, if he killed me, he will have killed two people.
For me, the determining factor is whether the pregnancy is beyond the age of viability or not, not the parents’ feelings toward it.
Well, it may be irrelevant to you, but it’s not irrelevant to me. This is a poll and I answered honestly for myself. I could care less about your particular circumstances or how you would vote - that’s between you and Ben or whomever else you deem relevant to forming your opinion.
One. The fetus wasn’t delivered. It wasn’t a person yet. Relying on emotions I’d want to say two.
I had a name picked out for my girls almost as soon as I found out I was pregnant. Actually one I had a name for before she was even conceived, and the miscarriage I had at four months? Well that would have been David Michael, but he was dead before he was born. Names don’t mean a thing.
Humm - this post reads quite a bit crankier than I intended it to be. To me, intent forms at least part of the answer to the question.
If the father viewed the fetus as only a fetus, insisted that mother terminate, etc. then I think his intent was to kill one person with the fetus (as that’s how he’s viewing it) being largely irrelevant to his motives.
If he views it as his child, calls it by name, picks outfits out for it to wear - well, then he’s viewing it as a person (regardless of the legalities of if it is) and he is choosing to kill his child as well, as opposed to a ‘bunch of cells’ or ‘useless tissue’ or whatever else you may choose to refer to an unborn fetus as.
Remind me again when we celebrate a child being one year old: is it three months after they are born or twelve?
I can see three different ways to interpret the question:
1: How many people is Scott Peterson morally guilty of having killed? In this case, the important question is whether he would have considered the kid a “person”. There’s no way to know this for sure, of course, but the fact that they picked out a name is suggestive that he did.
2: How many people is Scott Peterson legally accountable for having killed? This is the most clear-cut question, since the courts have already decided it, and the answer was two.
3: How many people should Scott Peterson have been held legally accountable for having killed? This one is GD material, and I’m not going to get into it here.
Since at least two of the interpretations give an answer of “two”, that’s what I’m saying. And in any event, regardless of whether Connor was a person or not, he certainly had a name, so I chose the last option.
There are plenty of examples of parents killing born children for various motives. I don’t think it is necessarily that the father is not recognizing the fetus as a separate person as it is that he just doesn’t care and wants to be free of what he perceives as a problem for him.
Just like the cultural holdover that Jewish tradition recognizes the age of 13 as the point of maturity means that 13 year olds should be allowed to vote, smoke, and join the army?
I have heard the view expressed by biologists that, compared to most other species, the newborn human infant is essentially a fetus. Human pregnancies end at 9 months mostly because the big fat heads of human infants make a poor combination with the relatively narrow pelvis that is necessary for humans to walk upright. It seems kind of arbitrary to me to think that a fetus that is 40 weeks post-conception is not a person but yet a newborn baby that is 40 weeks, 1 day post-conception is much more of a person.