Now, I’m pro-choice, but I like consistency in things. If you read the story, this asshat found out his girlfriend was pregnant and tried to hire someone to kill the unborn child. The article linked is unclear, in fact it contradicts itself, but in both the headline and the body of the article it says that he wanted his GF injured in such a way that she would lose the baby. In another place it says he wanted to kill her. He was arrested and charged with investigation of solicitation to commit first-degree murder and solicitation to commit first-degree manslaughter. Now, if he was trying to kill his GF, end of story. He was charged appropriately. However, if he was “only” attempting to have her injured in such a manner that she lost the baby, how can investigation of solicitation to commit first-degree murder and solicitation to commit first-degree manslaughter be appropriate if abortion doctors are not charged the same way? Attempting to solicit assault I could see, but charging him with attempted solicitation to commit murder or manslaughter opens a real can of worms WRT abortion in my mind. What do you think? And finally, if this guy is convicted, do you think that the anti-choice folks will attempt to use this case a a precedent in their fight against choice?
Yes. In my opinion, that’s the whole point of laws that treat the killing of a fetus as murder/manslaughter. They want legal precedents that will let them outlaw abortion, and otherwise let them control and harass pregnant women.
Well, the obvious difference is that legal abortion procedures are performed at the volition of the woman.
I agree it’s stupid to use the language of “murder” in cases where a person injures or kills a fetus against the will of the woman, and it makes the law appear contradictory but it’s the result of anti-abortion activists trying to get what they can get. Getting the law to say that a fetus can be “murdered” is, as you suggest, an attempt to get the camel’s nose under the tent in the effort to get a fetus defined as a “person.”
While I agree that any attempt to injure a fetus against a woman’s will is a grievous assault and should be treated as such, I also think it should be treated as a crime against the woman, not the fetus. I have no problem with sentencing crimes of this nature as harshly as possible (even with sentences equivalent to those of murder), but the language should be changed. Of course, for the anti-abortion movement, the language is the point.
Usually when an abotion is done the woman does it voluntarily.
Perhaps they could find a way to make it a crime for “forced abortion/miscarriage”, or what have you?
To me, it’s simple…the worth of a fetus/unborn baby is whatever the mother gives it. I use both terms, because it illustrates the same point. If the mother doesn’t want it, it’s a fetus…if she does, it’s a baby. Therefore, if the mother believes it’s murder, it’s murder. If she doesn’t, then it’s not. I think that if the mother has the right to consider that it is NOT worthy of life, then she also has the right to consider that it IS worthy of life, and the ending of that life to be murder.
If I shoot her dog, or chop down her tree, does she get to decide that is murder as well ? It’s either murder or it’s not.
Feticide statutes have a long history predating Roe v. Wade and have never been held to apply to abortion. IIRC, in the pre-Roe days, anti-abortion statutes were separate from feticide statutes.
But we don’t treat dogs or trees the same way in our society as we do fetuses. As an example, take an example of a very sick fetus (say, with a heart defect). Doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies will go to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of effort & expenditure to save such a fetus if the mother deems the baby worthy of such effort. The same is not true of dogs or trees. If the mother wants that baby to be born, every effort will be made in the same way as it would be for a child that was already born, if she wishes it and if it is medically possible to help it.
Here is an overview of state laws on feticide; note the reference to Washington as one of 31 states that have criminalized as manslaughter an attack on a woman that terminates her pregnancy if the child is viable. (The statute uses the term “quick,” and a couple cases I looked at defined quickening as occuring between the 16th and 20th week of gestation.)
Abortion, by contrast, is not a “right,” but it is part of our privacy rights found in the penumbra of the Bill of Rights. As SCOTUS has explained, there is a sliding scale of state interest – as the child gets closer to viability outside the womb, the state’s interest in the child’s life increases; thus, prohibitions on abortion in the first trimester generally are not appropriate, but as the fetus develops, the state’s interest increases, and it can limit abortion in the second and third trimester, even forbidding it entirely.
I therefore think that there isn’t a conflict between Washington’s feticide law and abortion rights. It becomes more problematic in a state where the age of the fetus isn’t specified. This article is a good overview of the problem.
One of the articles cited states that the leading cause of death in pregnant women is murder. If accurate, then the state certainly has an interest in increasing penalties for injury to pregnant women, including increasing penalties if the fetus is injured or involuntarily aborted. But it does become problematic when the laws are written so sloppily that they confer legal rights on a fetus; it could have affects outside the realm of criminal law or abortion rights.
Der Trihs, your example doesn’t make sense. The state defines murder; if it wanted to define murder to include trees, well, theoretically it could. The fact that the state has defined first trimester abortion as “not murder” and injury to a pregnant woman that causes her to miscarry a child that has quickened as “murder/manslaughter” means that one is murder, one isn’t.
Moreover, it doesn’t seem to be dictated by “because she said so” as much as it is dictated by privacy rights. Which is an entirely different issue.
It’s a moral right. If it’s not a legal one in a particular society, that just means that society is unjust.
The state can define the law however it likes; that won’t make killing a tree murder. For that matter, the state can define atheists as soulless nonhumans unworthy of protection, and if someone kills me it will still be murder. The law does not define reality.
No, none are murder. Except in the purely legalistic sense, which is frankly silly; are you going to claim that killing someone to rob him in the days before laws were invented wasn’t murder ? Are you going to claim that the legalized killing performed by tyrants isn’t murder ?
I was responding to Sarahfeena, who did say it was “because she said so”.
It’s a interesting distinction, but not one that should be anywhere near the law. The problem is that the fetus/unborn baby can only be one of those things; a group of cells no more worthy of protection that a finger, or a person with a soul. Which it is is certainly debatable, but it can only be one. Making the law say *it can be be both * is just plain incorrect.
And, of course, i’m against it for the practical reason that it would give anti-abortionists another foothold. And what’s stopping an otherwise pro-abortion mother from saying “No, it’s a baby” just to get the attacker a harsher sentence? It would be too easy to abuse.
To the OP:
On the one hand, you are quite correct, the report in the article you link to is self-contradictory as to what the intent of the boyfriend was. On the other hand, maybe you should hold back on your judgement until you know more of the real facts surrounding the case?
Here is Washington’s manslaughter statute. Section 2 says: " He intentionally and unlawfully kills an unborn quick child by inflicting any injury upon the mother of such child." As far as abortion goes, I’m thinking, without doing the research, that the use of the term “quick” child only includes post-viability children.
This is one of the reasons I have alway had trouble with abortion…you are right it DOESN’T make sense that the value of the fetus is solely dependent on the mother’s attitude towards it. However, this is clearly true. The social attitude towards the fetus is completely different depending on whether or not the mother chooses to have it. I am pregnant right now…no one asks me “how’s the fetus?” They ask, “how’s the baby?” “Can you hear it’s heartbeat yet?” “Is it a boy or a girl?” It is clearly valued by society as a baby, because I value it as a baby. I don’t see how the law can ignore this reality.
Lots of people are pro-abortion, and still value their own, wanted child. That pro-abortion person may sincerely feel that the killing of their mid-term or late-term fetus IS murder.
I imagine that I too would use those words, but that’s because im polite, not because I think it’s a child (though i’m sure of your friends there are a percentage who are anti-abortion). The problem is this; you’re wanting the law to accept the views of a minority (even a large minority) of society, and that can’t be how laws work. How do we decide how large a part of society must be before we include their views into law? Can racists get a lesser sentence for killing a target of their hatred because in their view, they are lesser? Can someone use a pyramid scheme to scam money from people if he doesn’t think that’s bad? What if the scammed don’t think it’s wrong?
Plus of course this would bring up other concerns i’m sure you (or some anti-abortion people) wouldn’t like; pretty much all scientists who want to use to-be-disposed-of embryos would all be allowed to do their work, since they see nothing wrong with it, for example.
I don’t see your point. The law reflects that, since abortions cannot be performed after a certain time period. And of course I can point out to you that an anti-abortion person may sincerely feel that the killing of their mid-term of late-term fetus* isn’t* murder; it’s the kind of traumatic event that could lead one to reflect and reject one’s views of God and hence the personhood/soul of said fetus.
Oh, sure, I know some pro-lifers…I also know a heck of a lot of pro-choicers, many of whom have their own children, and were more than happy to refer to the kids as “my baby” when they were pregnant.
In my original post in this thread, I was actually being somewhat sarcastic…you were right when you said that in the eyes of the law, the fetus CAN’T have 2 different values. But in real life, it does, and that makes no sense to me, either. This is why I’m pro-life myself, and why I think that the laws against harming a fetus are moving us in the RIGHT direction, not the wrong one.
And, as I said, I’m a pro-abortionist, and I would most definetly call it “Your baby”. Because i’m a polite person. Do you honestly believe that all pregnant pro-abortionists hang around saying “Is the bundle of cells you’re currently nurturing developing normally?” (Well, we might, but only as a joke). I think saying “People call it a baby, therefore people all think it’s a baby and that killing it is murder” is something of a stretch.
No, it doesn’t. In real life, it can only have one. It cannot, at the same time, be both a person and not a person. The two are incompatible. We do not know which is correct, but that does not mean that both are.
You’re anti-abortion because a fetus can’t be both a person and not a person? But from that standpoint, you could just as easily be pro-abortion. There must be some other factor that’s leading you towards that side of the argument.
I think that many people who are pro-choice become emotionally attached to unborn babies… Some don’t perhaps…but I actually think they are probably in the minority. The fact that people CALL it a baby is not really my point…my point is that the emotional attachment seems to exist.
Sure there is…I have several reasons…but this thread is about this specific question, and it is one I have never been able to resolve in my mind. It has simply never made sense to me that the value of the fetus seems to be whatever value the mother gives it. In my opinion, there must be some greater value, or none at all.
Sure, i’d agree with that. But we don’t make laws based on emotions (or at least, that’s the idea). Is it ok to steal something if the owner has no emotional attachment? Would it be acceptable to kill someone that no-one cares about - or someone all people actually hate? No, it wouldn’t. We say that all people have an equal worth, and so barring self-defence or other variables the killer of a loved person will be tried under the same law as the killer of a hated person, and (ideally) given the same sentence.
Since when does it? Your hypothetical where sentencing depends on the mother’s opinion isn’t law.
I wouldn’t say no value; after all, that something is being destroyed is beyond doubt, and there will be injuries; so with this some value, assault is an excellent charge.