# Man who put abortion-inducing drug in girlfriend's drink gets 22 years in prison -attempted homicide **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 14, 2018, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-who-put-abortion-inducing-drug-in-girlfriends-drink-gets-22-years-in-prison-attempted-homicide/822932 "2018-10-14T13:15:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2018, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-who-put-abortion-inducing-drug-in-girlfriends-drink-gets-22-years-in-prison-attempted-homicide/822932/101 "2018-10-28T21:00:33Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Well, of course people’s opinions may vary widely on the issue. But no, for most people I don’t think you are describing things fairly. The pro choice position is a positive assertion of the woman’s right to bodily autonomy _relative_ to the rights of a fetus, not an assertion that a fetus has no rights at all. If one is ethically confident in that relationship, the question of _exactly_ where the rights of fetus lie does not need to be addressed unless a fetus can be grown independent of a woman’s body. As was said there is no single ‘pro choice position’. The one above is I personally find more reasonable than what I believe is the much more common, simplified politicized position which _does_ effectively say the fetus has no rights: it’s a ‘lump of cells’. But then later on there can be restrictions, because some judges said so once, and what they said can never be revisited. And that’s not necessarily because the people (organizations more than individuals) promoting the absolutist pro choice position are necessarily inherently stubborn or unreasonable though I find they often are. The idea that abortion is a question of relative rights of a woman and fetus implies that there can be all kind of abortion limitations, and each one has to be litigated based on how the rights line up in that particular situation, and re-examined continuously as science and other factors change. IOW your idea is reasonable, but a whole lot more complicated than woman 100% rights, fetus 0% rights. Also, I think the pro-choice absolutists have a fairly good argument that RvW and Casey are more compatible with 100/0 than they are with your idea. So yours is reasonable, and I think many average people across the spectrum from mildly pro choice to mildly pro life agree with it implicitly even if they don’t articulate it. But it’s also a can of worms relative to the more common (in politics at least) absolutist pro-choice position. Anyway a law which deems it _murder_ to kill somebody else’s fetus under the current RvW ‘right’ of a woman to kill her own fetus is simply a contradiction. I see no reason to bend over backwards trying to come up with arguments how it’s not a contradiction. An absolute/RvW friendly pro-choice position could easily accommodate killing somebody else’s fetus as a _crime_, but calling it murder is a contradiction to the hardline pro choice view. Your car doesn’t have any rights of its own, smashing the windows is a crime against the owner though the owner smashing them herself is not a crime. But this is being called, by analogy, a crime against the _car_. ---
**Author:** ![assassinpaladin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/58956e/32.png) [@assassinpaladin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/assassinpaladin)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2018, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-who-put-abortion-inducing-drug-in-girlfriends-drink-gets-22-years-in-prison-attempted-homicide/822932/102 "2018-10-31T01:21:38Z")
Karmically shitty move on the guy’s part. While I do believe that “attempted homicide” is a wildly out-there charge to drop on the man (let’s be honest, this ruling is _definitely_ going to face an appeal, and will almost certainly be reversed) he definitely deserved to be punished. New legislation should be written that makes forcing abortion on a woman, especially without her knowledge, subject to a heavy penalty. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2018, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-who-put-abortion-inducing-drug-in-girlfriends-drink-gets-22-years-in-prison-attempted-homicide/822932/103 "2018-10-31T17:56:12Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > You need a kidney. I’m the perfect donor and I agree to give you one. Fine > > You need a kidney. I’m the perfect donor, but do not agree to give you one. You are not a doctor, but you drug me and take out one of kidneys, and get a doctor to put it into you. > > Not fine with that. What if your kidney consented? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-who-put-abortion-inducing-drug-in-girlfriends-drink-gets-22-years-in-prison-attempted-homicide/822932.md?page=5)