We DON’T protect life in the case of organ donation. We don’t protect it in the case of blood or marrow donation. When a bunch of kids laughed and filmed a drowning man instead of calling 911, their right to spend their time as they pleased was put ahead of his right to life.
Just focus on organ donation: when we let people die because the corpse that contains the organ they need to survive belongs to someone who wants to bury it instead, how is that putting protecting life ahead of all other rights?
I think the analogy breaks down because nobody thinks the crime would be against the kidney. It would always be against the person. However, in the case mentioned in the OP, the crime is against the fetus, not the woman.
The point of this thread is (I believe), should the crime be against the woman or the fetus? And, if you think it should be against the fetus, how do you square that with abortion rights?
As I mention upthread, I think this law is terrible and puts us on the path to fetal personhood laws, which would be a serious challenge to abortion rights. I think the appropriate law would be some sort of aggravated assault against the woman, and, if she’s pregnant, I could see further punishment because of that. However, the crime should be against the woman since she’s a person and the fetus isn’t.
I think that there’s always going to be some mess/confusion with language, emotion, and real-world application when it comes to laws around fetuses.
Much like age of consent; of course in real-world terms there is no practical difference between a person the day before they turn 18 [or whatever the age of consent is in your jurisdiction] and the day after, but we have to draw a line in order to have predictable, dependable and repeatable enforcement.
Of course the fetus and the woman both were targets here. If that kid grows up and hears this story, they’ll likely say “that guy tried to kill me,” and they’d be right.
The way I think about this stuff, and really the only way that doesn’t end up with bizarre and arbitrary definitions of “personhood” is that the moment when a fetus becomes a person is a philosophical question, not a medical question, and as such there is no one right answer. With that in mind, the important question for society is not “when does a fetus become a person” but rather “what ‘rights’ do we choose to give a fetus, and when, and for what purpose?”
Honestly, I kind of see this the way octopus does in post 51. As long as expectant mothers treat their gestating children like little growing humans, there will always be an element of “personhood” in a fetus.
So, is this “attempted manslaughter”? It may not be exactly the right charge, but attempting to kill a fetus seems obviously fundamentally different than attempting to inflict bodily harm upon the mother. Attempted assault does not fully describe the crime.
This is not how I, a pro choice person, look at it. I recognize that I’m not typical in most of my beliefs, however. But a fetus can be a person, an unborn child, an embryo, and a “clumps of cells” all at the same time. It just so happens that one person, and one person only, has the right to say “you can’t live inside my body anymore” and that’s the person whose body is being lived in. Nobody else gets to tell her what can and can’t live inside of her. That includes pissed off dads who wish she had made a different choice. If the person whose body a fetus is living in wants that fetus to continue living there and to be born and become a full fledged child, it’s absolutely murder for anyone else to kill it.
I wouldn’t even have a significant problem calling abortion murder as long as you recognize that the mother has the right to murder that particular individual at that particular time, because the alternative is that she doesn’t have any autonomy or control over her own body. That doesn’t make abortion a good thing, but it is a necessary thing sometimes, and thus should stay legal. And “murder” is an illegal killing. That’s the main argument I have against calling abortion “murder”. “Homicide” however, works.
I’ve known some moms whose attitude was “Look here son, I done brung you into this world and if you don’t straighten up I’m gonna take you right back out of it, you hear me?”
But I think the moment of birth should end their authority to do that.
I do not think this analogy really works. In this case the passersby had nothing to do with the situation. They just happened to be there and had no legal obligation to intervene.
In the case of a woman’s unborn child she put the unborn in that position. It would be more akin to hanging someone out an apartment window. If you did that, and let go the rope, claiming you are under no obligation to save the person is wrong. You put them in that position and if you let go and they die you murdered them.
I hate to just post “agree” but this is the point very well made.
Here let’s take it just one step farther. A couple had been trying to get pregnant and have a bunch of fertilized embryo stored. They divorce and the father breaks into the storage facility and destroys the embryos against the woman’s wishes. Besides breaking and entering what crime has he committed?
The logic of calling the crime of the op attempted “homicide” would justify call this one homicide too, rather than destruction of property. Is it? Are you comfortable calling it that? Why or why not?
Interestingly there is an effort to have those frozen embryos deemed persons with all the legal rights that entails. If they succeed then we would have to deem the accidents below a much greater tragedy than 9/11 (which is just weird).
Define “mother”. There have been plenty of fertilized eggs introduced into the uterus of a woman acting as a surrogate, with zero genetic relationship to that fertilized egg.
One, a lot of women get pregnant through no choice of their own.
Two, how long do you have to hold that rope? Pregnancy is life-threatening. We don’t compel parents to donate blood or bone marrow to their kids. We don’t compel anyone to donate organs. Why do those rights trump the right of another to live?
To sum it up: A divorcing couple with frozen embryos. She wanted to carry them to term, he wanted them destroyed. The final court battle ended up with them being destroyed.
That’s a terrible analogy; ‘She put the unborn in that position?’ No, they came into being in that position, and that is the only position they can survive in. It’s not like fetuses are just chilling out somewhere and women grab 'em, shove 'em in their uteri, then claim the right to choose. If that happened, then you might claim that she put them in that position.
A fetus’ only chance of survival is through using its mother’s body and organs, and in every other situation, people can decide not to allow others the use of their body or organs, even if the person in need of an organ is a minor child of the potential donor, who had made exactly the same choice to bring them into being as the hypothetical pregnant woman. We even allow people to decide that a dead person’s right to their organs is greater than a live one’s, even in that situation. Why should an unborn person be different? Why should their right to use another’s body be greater than that of an unarguable person, who’s born, breathing, and needs a kidney from a dead person to live?
From the personal autonomy point of view the analogy might be
mother gets an abortion = Mother kills intruder in her apartment (not guilty by castle doctrine)
OP crime = Father kills guest that mother has welcomed into her apartment (Murder)
If you’re going to pursue this analogy, keep in mind that it takes more than someone just being in your home before you’re legally and morally allowed to kill them. (If you don’t agree, remind me never to come to any parties at your house.)
So? Do you support forcing parents to donate blood or bone marrow to their kids?
If I agree to donate a kidney to you,but at the last minute, I change my mind, I haven’t done anything illegal. Even if you die as a result–because you were taken off the anonymous donor list–I haven’t done anything illegal.
If I agree to donate a life-saving kidney to you in the event of my death, die, and then my husband decides he’s uncomfortable with the situation, it’s not a crime for him to stop the donation–it’s his absolute right. This is true even if you are my kid.
If I’ve agreed to give you a kidney and then change my mind, are you comfortable with the state having me strapped to a table and forcibly cutting it out? Because forcing me to have a baby would be exactly that.
An abortion is denying another person the use of your body, in no other circumstance do we consider this murder. Someone trying to kill you is murder, someone refusing to give you a kidney to save your life is not. I don’t see the disconnect.
What if the other person already has your kidney, and then afterward you regret it and say you want it back?
Because in the case of the fetus, it’s not being denied your body in the first place, it’s already in there and you’re looking to revoke the access it already gained.
If you murder a person that is sentenced to be executed you have committed murder, even if the state would have legally ordered someone to kill him at a later time. Same thing here, the woman has a legal right to kill (or ordered killed by a person with proper medical training), however if you go and do something to kill her unborn child you have committed murder. Morally killing does not equate to murder which has a legal and a separate but semi-related moral definition.
If you’re still using and depending on the kidney that the other person now also has access to, I’d say that would considerably affect the question of whether you should be forced to allow the other person to continue using it.