A lot of people have said that a woman’s right to do what she wants during pregnancy shouldn’t be questioned- i.e., ideally she shouldn’t smoke/drink but if she does, legally she can’t be arrested.
In this case, though, is Julie Starr responsible for the death of the child? My further question- what if the child hadn’t been delivered and she had just miscarried- should that have been treated as homicide?
Basically, my topic for debate extends to the question of where you draw the line…how much abuse can a pregnant woman do to herself before the welfare of the fetus comes into consideration?
If a woman wants to terminate her pregnancy, then that’s all right by me.
But why should she have the right to do drugs and alcohol and churn out a physically and/or mentally damaged baby, when the cost will ultimately be on society and on the affected child for a LIFETIME?
Blairon. If you would read the article again you can’t help to but notice this paragraph:
Cytogenetic testing confirmed that he had been born with Trisomy 13, a chromosome disorder that causes severe mental retardation, physical abnormalities and, often, death.
The baby had a pre-existing condition that was mentally and physically damaging. By your logic, the young lady in question, by virtue of the vehicle accident, spared society the cost and burden of a nonhealthy child.
The alcohol she consumed, which is never a good idea during pregnancy, was at the highest level measure .08, a very small alcohol to blood level.
Now we have what would otherwise be a sad incident, turned into a circus of propaganda, by the powers-that-be. In our eagerness to make the world politically correct and just for all in the eyes of certain people, this young lady is being charged with homicide.
She made a bad mistake, and will have to live with the facts the rest of her life. She is 17 years old, in my opinion, still just a kid, not a murderer. Is it so important to make an example of people, that we have to take an otherwise on-track young person (high school graduate with a college scholarship) nd derail her from the beginning. Knee jerk reactions sicken me.
It’s messy in that you’ve got alcohol, underage drinking, driving and trisomy 13 all mixed up together. I don’t think a homicide case is present though as she didn’t cause the car accident hoping to murder the child. It’s more probable the baby died as a result of the trisomy and the premature birth than solely as a result of the premature birth. 32 weekers usually survive OK now.
I’m pro-choice. I can’t however, make the step to say that it is alright to terminate a fetus but illegal to damage it. This insane logic says that you could have an abortion to avoid conviction of abuse.
We can’t have it both ways…or at least we shouldn’t have it both ways…and yes, I have stayed awake at night trying to find a way around my apparent consent of damaging the unborn through drug use.
It’s legal to kill cows, right? We recognize that cows don’t have a legal right to remain alive. But it’s not legal to brutally torture and disfigure them. Why is that?
It seems logical to conclude that giving an entity (like a fetus) one right (to not be intentionally disfigured) does not lead to giving it ALL rights.
Because I see little difference in damaging a future life and ending a future life.
This is a totally different topic that has also caused me to stay awake at night. I tend to have trouble with laws against cruelty to animals for the same reasons I have trouble with abuse charges, or murder charges, on human fetus’s. We (our governments) consider murder to be the worst, or most extreme, crime when done against humans. If the most extreme crime (killing) is allowed for animals, why is it not OK to do crimes of a lesser nature.
Clearly my views are of a minority but I see no way to allow the killing of a being and not allow the disfiguring of the same. They are either both right, or both wrong. If our laws are written in the pretense of guiding society to do right, then the laws are a huge contradiction. If laws are written so that the majority of people don’t have to witness unpleasant things, then they are right on target.
And to answer a question that may follow, I do not know if they are right or wrong. If I could get graduate credits for thinking about this topic, I’d have a PhD by now.
Of course, hearing your ideas may shed light on the dilema for me and allow me to get some sleep, so please Post On.
Some things are worse than death. I think that leaving a person paralized for life from the neck down is worse than killing them outright. Of course, that’s the subject of another debate.
You do realize this is a mock trial set of facts. It never really happened. Take a deep breath and relax your moral outrage.
The law has been pretty clear on this case, the only way the mother could be charged with homicide is if she had killed a “person.” Caselaw around the country is pretty well in step with SCOTUS in saying an unborn child is not a person.
However, many States have enacted laws that attempt to protect unborn children from harm, both from outsiders and from the mother. Me, I think it is a good thing.