Hey, it wasn’t our side that made this an issue wrt Laci Peterson, AKAIK. It was the abortionists who made an issue over it, per the remarks from NOW this morning.
Of course, I understand your concern. If I advocated a position so morally unjustifiable as late-term abortions, I wouldn’t want a national discussion on it either. And I certainly wouldn’t want one that actually focused on the issue of whether a fetus was a life. Yes, if I were an abortionist I’d much rather ignore that issue entirely, invent a federal “right” ex nihilo, and then concoct a rhetoric in defense of that invented right that casts my position as a defense of liberty.
Boy oh boy, this sure could blow up in the abortionists’ faces.
As inflammatory as this post strikes me, it brings a question to mind (apologies for the slight veering off main topic here): do anti-abortion advocates mainly want to delegitimize late-term abortions, as RexDart puts it, or all abortions? Put the question in reverse for the pro-choice side.
My assumption has always been that each side sticks to the all-or-nothing side of their viewpoint, for fear of the slippery slope. But I’d like to know how fair it really is to say that pro-choice advocates “advocate late-term abortions” (in the sense of keeping it legal, NOT advocating it as in encouraging it, of course)…
I haven’t been following this case or, for that matter, closely following this issue, so please update me. Isn’t the limit on late-term abortions something like 25 weeks–i.e. a 23 week old fetus? (If there are any exceptions to that aren’t they only where it will save the life of the mother?) And wasn’t Peterson 8 months’ pregnant-- i.e., 34 weeks? If my facts are correct, aren’t these issues quite distinct?
As much as you are dancing around the notion that a fetus is life, and “killing a fetus” is just that, you might as well acknowledge that it is murder inutero. To somehow not give the fetus rights (to live) and yet call the “termination of the pregnancy” a callous disregard for the quality of her life, but not to the obvious detriment to the baby, seems highly conflictual at best.
Sure - the fetus is part of the mother’s body, so treat it like any other assault. Killing the fetus is equivalent to removing the mother’s hand or liver.
I don’t think there’s a basis to punish the killer of a fetus as a murderer without according the fetus legal rights, so I would question why the goal is to punish him as a murderer in the first place.
Well put. I don’t think you could find even one woman whose preferred method of contraception is abortion. It is often a last resort and nearly as often a very difficult choice for any woman to make. Christianity has such a poor track record on their treatment of women (she’s a witch!), that it’s difficult to accept all their moralizing now.
While the fetus is most definitely a living organism, it is not in any way sentient or viable outside the womb for many weeks after conception. I think abortion is the worst possible form of birth control short of forced sterilization. I also think that after millennia of repression women must have absolute right over their bodies for once in history. Until such a time where there is socioeconomic gender parity or the artificial womb is invented, women must retain that control over their body. Paternity rights will not be pertinent until these two other deficiencies are met first. I think late term abortion is hideous and in most cases totally avoidable. The suppression of sex education in public schools merely increases what I’m sure is one of the largest populations of those who use abortion (and late term abortion) services, namely teenagers.
So please stop your sneering and resume participation in the debate at hand.
Thank you for posting the California legal code pertaining to this. As you see, it gives the mother absolute control and legal indemnity in her choice. Outlawing partial birth abortions perfectly sets the stage for further erosion of when or even if a pregnancy can or may be terminated.
And this was the point that I was trying to make. The offense is a crime against the pregnant woman and no other person. I further maintain that voluntarily assaulting a visibly pregnant woman and causing her unpermitted miscarriage is sufficiently heinous to justify a felony conviction with substantial hard time in prison.
It’s not fair to call it a “ploy,” as though all anti-abortionists were motivated solely by a desire to minimize women’s rights. If you think of the fetus as a baby, a person, it’s natural and consistent to consider killing the fetus murder and to think it should be a punishable crime no matter who does it.
Personally, I believe that killing a baby after it’s born is wrong, it’s murder, and it should be punishable as such. But I don’t know where the wrongness kicks in: at birth? conception? somewhere in between? And I’m not sure how to decide it, legally or morally. RexDart’s suggestion [“at the earliest point in gestation at which the baby could reasonably live outside the womb with the aid of medical technolocy is where the line should be set”] has the advantage that whether the baby/fetus is considered a person or not is not solely determined by its physical location (ie. inside vs. outside its mother’s body).
Agreed, and that’s what a felony mayhem charge (as in Tyson lunching on Holyfield’s ear) is all about.
Felony mayhem should be sufficient to drive a finding of special circumstances when a pregnant woman is killed. It might also be a suitable charge to bring whether the woman or only the unborn succumbed due to the assault.
No. Abortion is allowed up until the moment of birth – or even partial-birth.
Again, no. Doe v. Bolton established that third-trimester abortions are allowed if a physician deems it beneficial to the mother’s health – where “health” is defined so broadly as to encompass even her emotional, psychological and familial(!) state. This definition was so ridiculously broad that the Senate Judiciary Committee was forced to conclude:
It might be sufficient, but that’s not California law. 187(a) states it quite clearly if there is no consent by the mother to kill the fetus, then it is murder, and 187(b) covers the proper medical doctors if she does consent to the death of a fetus through abortion (so Stark is freaking out over nothing and looks quite foolish in doing so). 187 does not mention the word ‘mayhem’ or ‘manslaughter’, just the crime of murder. Don’t expect the prosecutors to go after one murder charge and one ‘mayhem’ charge unless they want Laci’s family in an uproar. They’ll go for the double, since this case was quoted as “a slam dunk” by the prosecution (Locklyer).
California can distinguish between a fetus, and a hand, liver or ear. So do most pregnant mothers.
I’m all for an open, public, dialogue on the issue. I think it’s an issue which reasonable people should think about and come to fair conclusions about. Judging from the tone of your rhetoric, you’re not one of the reasonable people.
Your point SEEMS reasonable. But what you’re really talking about is a late-term abortion against the woman’s will. I’ve never heard of such a thing. It seems to me you are saying something along the lines of, “We really need to think about the possibility that blue-skinned aliens may be forcing us all to become Elvis imitators someday … shouldn’t there be a law to prevent this from happening?”
Well, actually, no, because it’s unlikely to happen.
Sure, it’s fair to call it a ploy, if it in fact is one. A ploy is a sneaky plan to get soemthing over on an opponent. However, I am given to understand now that California has some weird legal standard that you should get more punishment if you kill two people than if you kill just one. So it may not have originated as a ploy, but as an honest attempt by the DAs office to get the max penalty on the perpetrator.
That said, I honestly think the attitude of most anti-choice folks toward a woman’s right to control her own body ranges from indifference to outright hostility.
Personally, I believe that killing a baby after it’s born is wrong, it’s murder, and it should be punishable as such. But I don’t know where the wrongness kicks in: at birth? conception? somewhere in between? And I’m not sure how to decide it, legally or morally.
The first question you should ask is what gives you the right to decide versus the person carrying the fetus.
RexDart’s suggestion [“at the earliest point in gestation at which the baby could reasonably live outside the womb with the aid of medical technolocy is where the line should be set”] has the advantage that whether the baby/fetus is considered a person or not is not solely determined by its physical location (ie. inside vs. outside its mother’s body).
It’s very likely that as medical technology advances, we will be able to fetilize human eggs outside the womb and bring them fully to term. Fact is, most preemies don’t do well without medical help, especially the very early ones. Rex is leading you down the garden path…
No. The state is not required to grant fetuses any protection; instead it has the option to do so.
If your boss could pay you an additional $100,000 beyond your normal salary, do you have a “right” to that $100,000? No. Your boss has the right to give you $100,000 or not; you have no rights in the situation.
**JThunder ** “No. Abortion is allowed up until the moment of birth – or even partial-birth.”
“Allowed” because of the mother’s health exception, though. I mean, some of the posters in this thread have made it seem as though it would be casually easy or common for a woman at 34 weeks to stroll into a doctor’s office and demand an abortion simply because she’d changed her mind. In practice, I’ve read that it’s quite difficult for women in many areas to get a mid-second trimester abortion (c. 22 weeks)–when there is no question of fetal viability.
I submit that at 34-36 weeks (which is what I take Peterson to have been) a woman would have to have a serious medical reason to justify an abortion: either something to do with her health, or the fetus’s (e.g., a fetus that is found to be non-viable because of missing organs).
Do you disagree with this statement? If so do you have information as to the number of healthy women whose doctors consented to aborting healthy fetuses after 30 weeks?
Yeticus Rex: Lockyear isn’t the prosecution. He’s not involved in the case AFACT. The prosecution is the DA of Stanislaw County. IIRC, Brazelton’s the DA of said county and Lockyear’s the AG of California.
The fetus is part of the mother’s body? So the mother actually has two sets of chromosomes? She has two hearts? Two brains? Four hands and four feet? Two sets of kidneys? Heck, if the fetus is male, then she has a penis as well?
Again, where “health” was defined in a ridiculously broad manner. Even the Senate Judiciary Committee drew attention to how ludicruously broad it is, and even concluded that this clause poses no effective barrier to having a late-term abortion.
Moreover, I was responding to Mandelstam’s question about whether late-term abortions were only allowed to save the mother’s life. Quite clearly, they are not.
That’s because many abortionists are unwilling to perform abortions after 22 weeks. In other words, they are uncommon, but they are still available, and they are most certainly allowed by law.
Besides, I don’t think any of the posters here said – or even remotely implied – that such abortions are “casually easy” to procure. Why should they? Such details are irrelevant to the question of fetal rights per se. It’s not “casually easy” to murder a stay-at-home mother of six, yet nobody dispute the fact that such actions are immoral, illegal and unspeakably reprehensible.