Only if Mom says so

In Wisconsin, a man attempted to spike his girlfriends smoothie with a chemical known in the abortion industry as RU-486. The girlfriend was only made aware of it after growing suspicious of her boyfriend after watching him stir her smoothie and noticing a residue on the rim of the cup.She took the drink to a laboratory for chemical analysis, which determined that mifepristone was mixed in to her drink.The defendant, Patel, has been charged with seven felonies and two misdemeanors, including attempted first-degree intentional homicide of an unborn child.So here is the question: Why is murder only contingent upon the mother's say-so to terminate a pregnancy? Why does a mother become the arbiter of homicide; of who is human and who is not?My detractor's will say that what made it murder, and immoral, is that he did not gain her consent -- since consent seems to be the grand arbiter these days.But here's the clincher that makes consent specious: Why the charge of murder? You can only murder a human, right? But a fetus is not human, nor does it retain any rights as such, say pro-abortion activists.If that's the case, then why was Patel not charged with aggravated assault and battery? Why the charge of murder? Source

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

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So here is the question: Why is murder only contingent upon the mother's say-so to terminate a pregnancy? Why does a mother become the arbiter of homicide; of who is human and who is not?

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"Attempted first-degree intentional homicide of an unborn child" is an abomination of a charge/law and should not exist.What's next, the banning of IUD's?Should we legislate that all women must not exercise excessively because she might prevent a potential fertilized egg from implanting?Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

Easy answer: It wasn't murder; the ruling represents CONSERVATIVE bullshit laws which you are trying to throw back in our faces like a troll. He should have been charged with serious poisoning, as the cell pack in her was not murderable. Of course, since he tried to take a part of her body (which the foetus is) and destroy it, then he should be held with as great of punishment as if he had schemed up a way to cut off her hand/foot/ear/etc.So... the question should be to you Mr. Anti-choice-pro-freedom-restrictionist: "Why the charge of murder? You can only murder a human, right? But a fetus is not human, nor does it retain any rights as such, say pro-abortion activists."Care to respond?Jon{ABE} Pro-abortionists? God, what a weasel! Conservatives need to learn how to frame debate better. No one is dumb enough to think someone is 'encouraging abortions'... save for, say, other conservies. Would you like to try again?{/ABE}Edited by Jon, : Jeesh

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In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist... might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. - Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species
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En el mundo hay multitud de idiomas, y cada uno tiene su propio significado. - I Corintios 14:10
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A devout people with its back to the wall can be pushed deeper and deeper into hardening religious nativism, in the end even preferring national suicide to religious compromise. - Colin Wells Sailing from Byzantium
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[Philosophy] stands behind everything. It is the loom behind the fabric, the place you arrive when you trace the threads back to their source. It is where you question everything you think you know and seek every truth to be had. - Archer Opterix [msg=-11,-316,210]

So you don't think it should be a crime to terminate a woman's pregnancy against her will?

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Henry Hyde finally died but his laws live on after him.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

There's a difference between removing a fetus that she wants and removing a fetus that she doesn't want. It's like the difference between performing consensual surgery on her and stealing her kidneys while she sleeps.The point is that the assault is on her, not on her fetus or her kidney. A charge of murder is inappropriate unless she dies.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels

Suppose we have two situations; one asshole beats a woman and puts her in the hospital, second asshole beats a pregnant woman, putting her in the hospital and killing her fetus. Are you saying that the second man shouldn't be more severely charged than the first?

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

I agree. One could argue whether or not the threat against the unborn fetus should increase the penalties above the obvious crime of trying to give the woman a drug against her will; in subbie's example, one could argue whether or not the miscarriage should warrant increased penalties above the obvious assault and battery. But I agree that killing a fetus is not homicide and shouldn't incur the same penalties as a homicide.

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Progress in human affairs has come mainly through the bold readiness of human beings not to confine themselves to seeking piecemeal improvements in the way things are done, but to present fundamental challenges in the name of reason to the current way of doing things and to the avowed or hidden assumptions on which it rests. -- E. H. Carr

If she loses a fetus that she wanted or a kidney or an eye, her assailant should be more severely charged than if she suffers no permanent injury.If she loses a fetus that she didn't want, I'm not sure it should be considered a permanent "injury".

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels

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Why is murder only contingent upon the mother's say-so to terminate a pregnancy? Why does a mother become the arbiter of homicide; of who is human and who is not?

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37 states have similar laws, and Wisconsin is a Blue state after all. So is this some massive neo-conservative conspiracy, or does sanity generally prevail?I'm also not throwing it in your face like a *ahem* troll. I'm forcing you to confront your own dehumanization logically. Which is what I am questioning. If most people are in agreement that a fetus is a non-human, then shouldn't Patel have been charged with aggravated assault? Obviously some people are all too aware that an unborn baby is just that -- an unborn baby. A fetus is not a part of her body. Its a body within a body. And if you object to that, then tell your friends who call a baby a parasite. I thought a fetus was an invader? So obviously it is not a part of her body.That said, of course she has the right to protect her child -- a child that she seemed to have wanted to keep. (Kind of makes the other "miscarriages" of hers look suspicious, eh?) Certainly! If a human fetus is not a fetus, then what is it? Don't say something tautological, like, a fetus is a fetus. If a fetus is just a fetus, and not a human, then a toddler is just a toddler, a child is just a child, a teenager is just a teenager, etc, and not a human.A fetus is the description of a human during that particular stage of development. Thought I'd share that revelation with you. Calling it Pro-CHOICE is the weasel thing to do, as if anti-abortionists are against choosing things. Nope, just against killing babies. Just so you know that I'm not being disingenuous, I will also add that reserving the right to be called "Pro-Life" is also an unfair characterization, because it would be silly to say pro-abortionists are against life.I think it should be pro or anti abortion since that is exactly what we are dealing with. Life and Choice encompass an enormous amount of things. Why not narrow the terms to their meaning? Why? I'm doing such a good job already Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : typo

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

Because it's her body; the fetus is being constructed from elements her body is providing. She bears the risks of pregnancy.So it seems to me to be completely reasonable to leave it to her discretion as to whether or not a human being is going to be allowed to gestate in her body. Because of pro-lifers. They were the driving force behind the "causing a miscarriage is murder" legislation that you're referring to. And it was all to support the precise rhetoric you're using here.So it's kind of disingenuous of you to act like you don't know anything about it. Who did you think was responsible for this legislation? Because pro-lifers don't think twice about jamming guys up with spurious charges of "murder" to further their own ends. What, you thought these laws happened all by themselves? Don't be naive.

Because of goofy NeoConservative American laws.It would not be so in the UK.

While I'm not going to say that none of this happened, I do think it's rather unreasonable to assume that this is the only motivation behind each and every person who voted for such legislation. (I say assume because I suspect you haven't read all legislative history for every such statute to give yourself a factual basis for the claim you are making.)I see nothing whatsoever inconsistent with supporting a woman's right to choose and at the same time recognizing that there is a societal interest in protecting fetuses from injury against the woman's wishes. My position is that, while a fetus is not a person, it is an entity separate and distinct from the woman. It is undeniably a potential human being, and I believe that the state can rationally conclude that the fetus in and of itself is worthy of some level of protection. That level of protection does not rise high enough to trump a woman's right to make her own medical decisions about herself, this is undoubtedly a significant interest. But, where there is no overriding concern such as a woman's right to privacy, the state is free to protect a fetus from injury by third parties.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

I'm not saying it is; I'm sure a large number of people were motivated by the fact it's essentially politically unsupportable to vote against any expansion of criminal penalties. Can't be "soft on crime", right? With murder charges? C'mon. You can't see the ruse, there? I'm all for protecting mothers against being forced to have miscarriages, but the law shouldn't treat those mothers like they're invisible. Injuring a woman by causing miscarriage was already a crime - hell, it's in the Bible. (And it's informative that the Bible doesn't consider it an equivalent crime to murder.)So where's the interest in extending the penalty? The interest, of course, is as a stepping-stone to prosecute abortionists for doing their jobs.

And there is nothing hypocritical or unwarranted about recognizing the attachment that a potential mother has for the unborn child she has chosen to have, and so nothing unwarranted about increasing the penalties to take into account the emotion distress that the child's death will cause her.But the fetus has no intrinsic rights of its own, nor does society have any legitimate interest in the fetus beyond the interests of its mother

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Progress in human affairs has come mainly through the bold readiness of human beings not to confine themselves to seeking piecemeal improvements in the way things are done, but to present fundamental challenges in the name of reason to the current way of doing things and to the avowed or hidden assumptions on which it rests. -- E. H. Carr