Aggravated assault requires either that there’s a serious risk of death, or a permanent disability. Abortion doesn’t do either of those things.
Cytotoc can, though. It’s got a boxed warning against use in pregnancy outside of a hospital setting.
Uterine rupture comes with a high risk of death.
That obviously depends on the precise wording of the criminal statutes in the jurisdiction concerned. But, in the US, the FBI compiles its “aggravated assault” statistics on a basis which includes assaults that occasion, or may occasion, “great bodily harm” - but no necessarily permanent harm, still less permanent disability.
Is an induced miscarriage “great bodily harm”? I’d say yes.
I’m curious. Why don’t men deserve a choice?
It’s not a matter of deserving, it’s that we can’t figure out how to give them a choice that isn’t a burden on other people. If we give them the literal choice of abortion, that’s a significant burden on the woman, physically and emotionally, and most civilized people are appalled at the notion of forced abortion, whether they identify as pro-life or pro-choice. If we give them the financial choice to say, “uh, don’t want to be a parent, sorry” (which is what I can theoretically get behind) we burden the taxpayers with a much higher risk of having to provide financial support to the child - single moms who don’t get child support are more likely to need food stamps, cash assistance, WIC and other forms of publicly funded assistance.
If you can figure out a way to give him “choice” that doesn’t potentially harm others, I’m all ears.
I think that’s perfectly correct. But it would also be nice if the response to a man being upset at what’s being pushed on him wasn’t “you should have thought of that before dropping your pants.” If it’s callous to say the equivalent to a female, then it’s callous to say it to a male. And sexist, since it assumes that men have better judgment than women.
It may be callous, but it’s factual. A woman who is faced with a difficult choice about abortion or having a child as a single parent, just like a man who is faced with an unwelcome obligation to pay child support, is facing a choice which in most cases could have been avoided by not having sex.
It’s true that a man and a woman in this situation face different unwelcome and unintended consequences. But I don;t think that makes any difference to the question of whether it is (a) callous, or (b) justified, or © possibly both, to point out that the unwelcome and unintended consequences that each of them faces were also avoidable consequences.
Children are entitled to support. Our society has determined that support should be provided by the parents, if at all possible.
Women have the right to decide to bring a pregnancy to term or not. You should not be able to force a woman into an abortion any more than you should be able to force her NOT to have an abortion. She should have the right to bodily dignity/determination.
This may cause a financial burden on the man in the scenario. He may or may not want to be a father. Sometimes, life is not fair.
Shouldn’t that be a discussion for another thread?
When done by a professional in the right setting, no it doesn’t. But abortion and/or miscarriages can indeed be deadly, when not peformed properly. Any medical process can.
Perhaps forcible miscarriage, or something like that?
Certainly. Giving someone a drug against their will to induce a miscarriage is inflicting serious bodily injury - not only is miscarriage a possibly excruciating procedure, fraught with both physical and emotional harms that essentially amount to torture if undertaken unwillingly, he’s risking the imposition of potentially serious adverse effects (remembering that the drug was not administered knowingly, so the miscarriage and other adverse effects would be unexpected and attributed to other causes).
The person administering the drug isn’t a health professional and has no idea whether the victim is taking other medications or is otherwise contra-indicated for this drug. He is recklessly endangering her life.
I have no qualms about punishing fraudulent administration of such drugs severely.
No doubt that the drug has the potential to cause serious bodily injury (although, being unfamiliar with the relevant law, I’m not certain that “emotional harms” or even “excruciating” pain constitutes serious bodily injury). The question, though, is: was there serious bodily injury here? Other than the actual miscarriage, I don’t get the sense that there was. So, then you have to ask whether a miscarriage is “serious bodily injury”? And I’m not sure what the answer to that is.
I would argue that inflicting torment on someone by misuse of their body is “serious bodily harm”. Imagine in you will that the woman was kidnapped and in the power of this guy, who tells her “I’m going to forcibly abort your pregnancy”. Anyone who has been a parent would view that as torture, without a doubt - many (including myself) would prefer having some fingers chopped off. Though I’m a father rather than a mother, if the guy had both of us in his power and offered me the choice “some fingers or I abort your wife’s pregnancy”, I’d have chosen the fingers.
A miscarriage is inflicting a wound on a person - it causes bleeding and pain. The wound in internal rather than external, but why should that make it less significant? The “serious” part comes from two sources: (a) the risk of serious complications; and (b) the emotional trauma that such a wound inflicts.
So objectively it causes physical damage, and subjectively that damage is severe.
The safety of the drug gives us an easy out here. But even if the drug was 100% safe, this would be an egregious offense.
I like your attempt here, but I’d change “no different” to “no better than”. Forcing an abortion could be considered significantly worse than assault.
I’m pro-choice. The law shouldn’t impose any religion on anyone. However, if a woman believes that a soul is created at conception and that terminating pregnancy, it should be her right to treat her pregnancy that way.
This makes sense.
I agree there’s a double standard here. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a reasonable way to avoid it. I think this is just one of those cases where men get screwed (oh pooooooor men).
More specifically, since this is a legal question, it’s granted by law. “Personhood” can be defined in many ways for many purposes: ethcics, religion, etc. However, regarding legal matters, it’s only the legal definition that matters. As a democracy, we have to come to some kind of agreement on this legal definition, informed by diverse ideas on the ethical and religious definitions.
Thanks: you put this better than I was able to. Radio-controlled self-destructing sperm? 
But that should not be used as an excuse to perpetuate evil.
That’s not exactly correct. The concept of personhood isn’t something we decide on as a democracy. It’s a question of natural rights, and thus in the bailiwick of the judicial branch.
Who is and is not a person should be decided by said judicial branch based on science. At a certain point of development, a fetus becomes a person, regardless of the intent of the mother. And before that, it’s not a person, regardless of the intent of the mother.
Florida does not require bodily harm as an element of aggravated assault. It requires an assault involving the use of a deadly weapon or intent to kill (§784.021, Fla. Stat.) The definition of the underlying charge of assault - §784-011 - is “…an intentional, unlawful threat by word or act to do violence to the person of another, coupled with an apparent ability to do so, and doing some act which creates a well-founded fear in such other person that such violence is imminent.” There was no threat, and hence no assault. We have a number of poisoning statutes, but they all refer to adulterating other substances (chiefly food and water) with poisons. There doesn’t seem to be one covering nonlethal administration of harmful substances directly.
This is a truly bizzare definition of assault. If I punch someone in the back of the head, it isn’t “assault” because they never saw it comming, and so no “threat”?
Perhaps something is missing here. In Canada at least, that definition is only the second part of the definition of “assault”.
In Canada at least, I think this section would have been appropriate:
It’s the distinction between assault and a battery. Yes, if you punch somone in the back of the head, it’s quite possibly a battery without an assault.
Heh, learn something new every day. Here in Canada, it appears the two are combined for criminal purposes, which makes more sense of the non-technical definition of the word - when I think of an “assualt” I think of actually hitting someone, not just threatening to do so.
In Florida, is there a crime of “battery”? If so, perhaps that, rather than “assault”, would be the appropriate charge.
That’s an interesting viewpoint, but I disagree.
Science cannot answer such a question. There is no “true” answer, nor an objective one. Instead, we have to rely on what we agree to as a society.
However, you could be correct in that courts could make the decision for us. If they do, and if we as a nation disagree, we’d have to rely on laws or constitutional amendments.
Of course, no matter what the “agreement” is, there will be (at least) a substantial minority who disagree.