Umm, first-degree murder is pre-meditated. This was an accident, even if the person they were shooting at they may have planned to kill. They should have been charged with 2nd degree murder.
Exactly. I have no problem with the idea that injuring a pregnant woman so that she loses her child should be treated considerably more severely than injuring someone without the consequence of losing the baby-to-be. But I absolutely do not think treating it more severely should require or involve treating an unborn child the same as an individual human being under the law. Murder of a pregnant woman is murder of one person, not two. It's insane to imagine that someone could be charged with murder for, say, causing a woman to fall and miscarry.
Do I think the verdict was fair? No. As far as being convicted of *first* degree murder, which is defined as pre-meditative....that, in my opinion, is wrong. Second degree at best.
Do I think they accidentally killed another human being? Yes. At 8.5 months gestation (I'm assuming 36w +/-), a normal fetus is completely viable, and if delivered will surivive. A normal fetus has a heartbeat, brain waves, and breathes, which covers the definition, in this state, of being "alive". What this article is *not* telling us (at least the part I could read) is the condition of the fetus when delivered. I have a feeling there are some extenuating circumstances here, for example, perhaps the child was delivered with a bullet wound to the aorta.
*retrieves flame retardant undies from the closet* ;)
I personally feel that it is appropriate for viability to have a place in legal discussions regarding abortion. I think it is reasonable for abortion to be easily obtainable in the first trimester, unlikely except in exceptional cases in the third trimester, and in the middle in the middle trimester. Our dividing lines must of necessity be a little bit arbitrary, but I think it should be obvious that ending a preganancy a week after conception is not the same as killing a baby a week before it would otherwise be born.
However, I do not think viability can reasonably nor should be a legal dividing line between 'not a person' and 'a full individual with all the rights and legal status of any other person.'
I just don't think, as long as a human-being-to-be is physically contained inside another human being, that they should count as an independent individual. Even if they could have an independent existence, possibly with the help of medical technology, at that moment they don't. You can't shoot the fetus except by shooting the mother. You can't poison the fetus except by poisoning the mother. It may not be comfortable to think about how thin the line is separating an 8.5 month old fetus from a baby -- birth -- and yet I really feel that legally, birth is by far the best delimiter we've got for when someone counts as an individual human being in their own right.
So, out of curiosity, how would you interpret the following cases?
1) The technology exists to have a fetus develop in a can which you then proceed to do. Are they considered to have an independent existence from the mother? 2) Someone *can* poison a fetus without poisoning the mother; for instance, the child has a genetic disorder similar to phenylketenuria (sp?) where certain substances that will not in any way effect the mother, but can kill the child?
Well, I did find the uterine replicator idea poking into my brain while writing some of this...
I think uterine replicators require us to do some bioethics catchup. I'm not really entirely when life and individual personhood should be considered to begin, in that case. I feel like being physically outside of another person's body, and being sustained by something other than a direct biological hookup from another person, gives you considerable points towards being considered an individual human being. On the other hand, just because we may get the ability to grow a fetus all the way from conception outside a human being doesn't mean the blastocyst is a person.
I think it is important, though, that in case 1) an injury to the fetus must be made directly to the fetus, not directly to the mother and incidentally to the fetus. I.e., to shoot a fetus in a uterine replicator in the head you have to walk into the lab where the replicators are kept, rather than shoot the mother in the abdomen, quite possibly without even knowing she's pregnant.
If someone burns down the lab and kills all the fetuses without directly intending to do so, what then? It's not the same as burning a bunch of pregnant women, since in that case you've got the obvious deaths of post-birth people. I'm not sure destroying a bunch of fetuses in replicators ought to be considered equivalent to destroying a bunch of people. I guess I like the laws which define causing the death of a fetus as a separate crime from causing the death of a person, but may treat it as as severe a crime. But you wouldn't necessarily want to treat the death of a blastocyst the same as a death of a fetus that was going to be born from the replicator tomorrow.
Then again, we don't have exact sentences for all situations of killing people either, so maybe this is another case where who and how you killed, and why and what else you were doing, just has to be taken into consideration.
2) -- well, I don't think someone is necessarily responsible for giving something to a mother to injest that they have no idea will harm her particular child. You can make a case that someone is responsible for giving things to a mother that they don't make her aware can or will harm any fetus she has. I wouldn't say that's murder, though. I think again that falls into injury to the mother, and conceivably injury to an unborn child if such laws exist, not injury to the individual person that is her fetus.
This kind of gets into the 'treat all women as pre-pregnant' business. I don't think it's necessarily anyone's job to be required to treat a woman as if she is pregnant all the time, or for her to act as if she is. I think a pregnant woman has a significant chunk of responsibility for not doing things to her body or allowing other people to that will harm her fetus. I think other people who are doing things that could have an impact on her fetus have a responsibility to allow her informed consent -- drug manufacturers, doctors, etc. I feel like there is some degree of difference here between a woman's fetus and her child; if a woman allows or enables harmful things to be given to her child, her child can be taken away from her 'for its own good', but you can't take out someone's fetus even if she is harming it. Can uterine replicators change this? Can you force someone who wants to body-birth to take their child out of their body and use a replicator because her drug addiction or whatever is harming the fetus? Seems to me that's a reproductive choice issue.
"I think again that falls into injury to the mother, and conceivably injury to an unborn child if such laws exist, not injury to the individual person that is her fetus."
Such laws do exist, at least in California. If a pregnant woman is murdered they can add murder of an unborn child onto murdering the woman if the foetus is at least 8 weeks old. While I think it is a good thing to distinguish between killing a birthed person and a foetus, I think that 8 weeks is a little early for that distinction. I have no good answer as to when the line should be drawn between foetus and person. I always thought that it should be when the foetus could survive on its own outside the mother, but technology makes that possible fairly early now.
And after a nasty incident in California the Federal Government passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which can be found here.
The article is not particularly clear on the circumstances of the case, but a reading of the definition of first degree murder could include what went on, depending on the particular state laws and whether they were attempting to prosecute a separate offense at the time. Premeditation may be made out since they were shooting at someone else entirely and had brought a gun to do so: at the very least "lying in wait" could apply. Lectlaw also includes a clause about reckless disregard for human life, which firing into a crowded subway train could easily be considered. That the person killed was not the intended target is not relevant, I think.
So I think first degree is justified, and then one has to turn to whether the unborn child was murderable. I find myself turning to asking what the mother's intent was; if her intent was to have the child, to take upon herself it's birthing and beyond, then I think it's a valid, murderable being. At the very least it is (or should be) a crime to infringe upon the mother's right to make that decision; and given the stake of human life, that is a very big right. It is hard to conceive of a worse crime against an individual that does not result in death than killing a child being carried by a mother. At the same time, I do not think that this should have bearing on whether the mother could make the same choice.
I hate to turn to the notion of property, but if someone burns down my house, intending to have burnt down my neighbor's house, and they get convicted of arson, it shouldn't infringe on my right to destroy my own property.
Of course, babies aren't property, in the strictest term. But I think you're bridging those two notions, so it's not totally invalid. The problem with pregnancy is that it throws in your face that humans are not as discrete as we would like to treat them. If I kill the mother of an unborn heir to a fortune that I would otherwise get, I really am trying to kill two people; it just happens that I have to kill one to get to the other. So I don't think it's unreasonable for the law to prosecute that, any more than it would be unreasonable for it to prosecute any sort of multiple homicide. On the other hand, it is entirely unreasonable for the law to dictate how a person procreates. That's why I like the notion of intent.
It is hard to conceive of a worse crime against an individual that does not result in death than killing a child being carried by a mother.
I completely agree with that. But I do not think they are the same thing.
In fact, it is possible to imagine a society in which causing the death of a fetus was considered a worse crime than causing the death of another person. (Hell, that's sometimes the way it apparently comes out in our society.) But that doesn't have to mean the fetus has the equivalent rights, status, or existence, or greater rights, status, or existence, than a born human being.
I absolutely do not think someone's 'intent' to have a child should have a bearing on the rights or status as a legal human being of that future child. I'm finding the notion of where that would extend to pretty alarming -- does an unwanted child have fewer rights? Can you abort a week before full-term because you don't want the child anymore? Because it's the wrong race or has a disability? Is causing someone to lose their fertility the equivalent of murdering their children-in-potentia? Spilling sperm or eggs in a fertility clinic? Accidentally destroying or damaging frozen embryos?
At the very least it is (or should be) a crime to infringe upon the mother's right to make that decision; and given the stake of human life, that is a very big right.
I agree. I see an injury or other negative consequence someone causes to a fetus as a crime against the mother -- possibly a crime very close to killing a human in its severity -- but it is a crime against the mother whose body contained the fetus, not against the fetus as an individual entirely in its own right.
For example, you should not be able to bring lawsuits 'on behalf of the fetus' that do not also have the mother as victim. Such as, against the mother or an abortion provider for attempting a medical abortion, or against the mother for 'harming her baby in utero' through drinking, putting herself at risk of physical injury, etc.
I absolutely do not think someone's 'intent' to have a child should have a bearing on the rights or status as a legal human being of that future child.
But is that not how it is? If you allow abortion, then the status of the child until the point of birth is entirely by grant of the mother. If the mother intends to give that child life and thereby the rights of any other human being, then they should have them. If anyone takes away the mother's ability to give birth and thereby pass on those rights, they are
I'm finding the notion of where that would extend to pretty alarming -- does an unwanted child have fewer rights?
They do currently. You find out you're pregnant, you don't want the kid, and you can get an abortion (in most cases). The child's rights are nonexistent.
But, in point of fact, all children have fewer rights. It's not like at some point in time you're granted all the rights the government (and therefore society) extends to which you're entitled. You get some at birth, some maybe before birth, some at sixteen, some at eighteen, some at twenty one, some at sixty four. There are issues of autonomy tied up in all of that; can a three year old really vote? (My opinion, ftr: yes!) And society has always provided a certain backstop; when you're 18, your parents lose the legal right to make a lot of decisions about your life. But previous to that there are plenty of examples where parents get to choose for you. And there are examples of life-and-death situations; if a child is in a coma, they might come out of it. But the parents get to choose to turn off the respirator. Now, they can listen to your wishes on the matter and extend your rights through their own - up until you get those rights in your own right. But they are considered gatekeepers.
All in all, it's not a terrible model. Can it be extended to this?
Can you abort a week before full-term because you don't want the child anymore?
This is, of course, the Question. When do you draw the temporal line, and why?
Because it's the wrong race or has a disability?
I think the eugenics angle causes some distortion. People abort babies for all sorts of reasons, and I wager ten to one that they don't, in most cases, have a clear understanding why. Most people in most cases don't have a clear understanding why they do the things they do. It is generally enough for us, though, to know that we choose to do them. Is it the mother's choice or not? If it is, does society have the right to question the reasoning? I think this is a fundamentally different question than 'what rights are extended to an unborn child and when and how are those rights extended?'
Is causing someone to lose their fertility the equivalent of murdering their children-in-potentia? Spilling sperm or eggs in a fertility clinic? Accidentally destroying or damaging frozen embryos?
Generally speaking, intent has to have some backing in action. Saying "I was going to do [x]" does not have the same weight as, "Dude, I was seven months into doing [x]." Also, one should probably take into account the actual damage; if you have a seven-month fetus in your belly, there is far more actual damage being caused than if your test tube is spilled.
But is that not how it is? If you allow abortion, then the status of the child until the point of birth is entirely by grant of the mother.
As you say, intent has to have some backing in action. No, I don't think that's how it is -- the fetus's status and rights are the same at a given instant regardless of whether the mother intends to have an abortion tomorrow or intends to carry through with the preganancy even if it means dying in childbirth. It's the same whether someone has replaced the mother's breakfast coffee with a poison that's going to cause her to miscarry if/when she drinks it the next morning. No matter what she thinks now, maybe in a month she'll discover her child has a horrific birth defect and wouldn't survive days beyond birth, and decide to abort. Or maybe she'll win the lottery and the approval of her spouse and family and decide she wants to keep and raise this child after all. You can't say 'she was going to give the baby up for adoption, so it doesn't matter to her that I killed it'; you can't say 'she was thinking she might have an abortion, so it didn't matter that I made her miscarry, even though now she wants to sue me.' She could have gotten to the abortion clinic and decided she was going to have the baby after all. It happens. And maybe be more devoted to that child than a woman who never even considered the possibility of abortion.
A woman who particularly wanted or didn't want her child to be born might care to a different extent about litigating injury to her fetus. But I don't think her plans for the future at that second should determine legally what sort of criminal action someone took in injuring her fetus, or what the legal status and rights of the fetus are. You can talk all you like about how you don't want to have a kid, but if you don't end your pregnancy, and you give birth, the kid's a legal human being. (Yes, being a legal human being doesn't give everyone the same rights by any stretch, but it does give you some.) You can talk all you like about how you want to see your kid graduate from college, but if you shake your baby too hard at 3 days and it dies...never happens.
Yes, being seven months into doing [x] matters. But it matters because of the current status -- 7 months pregnant -- which admittedly assumes something about there being a child at the end of that, but isn't based on 'in 2 months this could be a person, because I don't plan to do anything to stop that from happening' as opposed to 'I'm not going to moderate my drug use, so in a couple weeks I'll overdose and miscarry.'
However, it's true that in reality (and in most states), individual rights are more of a continuum, and certainly aren't treated as a not-a-person/person-with-all-individual-rights divide across the time of birth.
Ah, I think I was unclear. Someone shooting the mother, and then claiming that the mother didn't really want the kid wouldn't work because so long as the mother has the child, by default, they want that child. The intent part goes to how the child should be viewed by the law; if the mother intends to have the child (by default so long as they have it), someone shooting that child is shooting a person. I suppose there is also the component of 'there are no other reasonable barriers to having the child'; ie, she actually has a fetus, not she has some eggs that might be made to be fetuses. In such a situation, in the eyes of the law, I don't have a problem with the child being a legal person.
On the other hand, I don't think that you can charge a mother with murder for aborting a child because the intent isn't there anymore. It's somewhat paradoxical, I admit, that the aborting of the child proves the intent of not wanting it and therefore it's legality, but it makes some sense to me.
I suppose the difficulty I'm wrestling with internally is the notion you allude to of the mother who is pregnant but isn't caring for the child; who is drinking or otherwise damaging the child. You are forced to either say that the government requires a hand in childbirth (they have the right/duty to prevent you from damaging the child in utero) or that the mother extends only what rights she chooses to the child (including the right to life, the right to not be damaged, etc.). I think this is an extremely difficult question to answer in a world of emerging understanding about how things affect children for the rest of their lives; nutrition, habit, etc.
Hmmmm... So basically -- 1) How this type of thing gets prosecuted depends very much on the first degree murder laws of your state, which could include any number of things that we wouldn't really think of as murder at all, and certainly weren't premeditated; or could require premeditation. I'm not sure what the law is in MA. 2) I hate the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. I disagreed with it when they were passing it, too. 3) In many cases the Unborn Victims of Violence Act doesn't apply, since it applies only when prosecuting Federal crimes. 4) If the baby was born and briefly alive, it counts as a person (since it was born), and if it then dies because of something that occurred in utero, that could be prosecuted as murder since there was a living human being who died because of these people's actions. That seems to be what actually happened in this case -- the baby was successfully delivered through caesarian, and died 45 minutes later.
And, I suppose, basically the same situation could have occurred if, say, the mother had her baby in her arms or in a backpack and it was killed by this shot that was intended for someone else, while only wounding her. Then I wouldn't feel weird at all for this conviction; as it is I'm uncomfortable with the notion that what these men actually performed was a fatal injury to someone that was not a person (as well as a nonfatal injury to a person), but what they are being convicted for is a fatal injury to a person.
I guess it bothers me because the situation changed, through no action of the criminals, to make their conviction much more severe. ...Then again, I guess it's true that the exact same thing happens in terms of whether someone dies or doesn't die whenever they are injured by someone else: you will get charged with killing them or not get charged with killing them depending on the doctors' efforts and success, not based on any difference in what you actually did. True?
I suspect this case will be trotted out in various abortion debates. However, on reading the article, it doesn't look to me like it has anything to do with any issue I consider valid re: abortion. The kid survived 45 minutes after being delivered, then died from a gunshot wound inflicted before he was delivered - but I think it'd be pretty appalling to say that wounds delivered in utero somehow don't count if they end up killing you afterward.
The first-degree murder charge was pretty simple - they committed murder during their (pretty clearly) premeditated plan for committing another crime. That makes it first-degree, pretty much anywhere, I think - if you go into a shop to rob it with a gun and end up shooting people, that's first-degree.
My prolific watching of Law and Order causes me to think so, backed by the occasional conversation with a roommate. Basically, if you start doing violence, you become responsible for all sorts of fallout.
Premeditation may be made out since they were shooting at someone else entirely and had brought a gun to do so: at the very least "lying in wait" could apply. Lectlaw also includes a clause about reckless disregard for human life, which firing into a crowded subway train could easily be considered. That the person killed was not the intended target is not relevant, I think.
That is essentially correct. The intent, or mens rea, is a very significant aspect of criminal law. If they intended to shoot person A, but shoot person B by mistake, they are not charged with accidentally shooting person B, but intentially shooting person B, because they intended to shoot person A. They intended to kill someone, they fired a gun, and someone died; that they killed the "wrong" person is irrelevant. (You can also be charged with attempted murder for shooting an inanimate object if you thought it was a person at the time.) It is also the case that criminal laws may vary in specifics from state to state.
There's also felony murder, as wirednavi points out-- any death caused during the commission of a felony (bank robbery, etc) is automatically first degree murder, even if the death was accidental. It's to ensure that violence that occurs during the commission of another felony is prosecuted as severely as possible. This law is in effect in various places.
As for the fetus, I'm not really keen on assigning fetuses legal personhood, but in this case it does seem like the fetus was born via Caesarean and then died after delivery, which is a slightly different situation than, say, someone being charged with 2 homicides for the killing of a pregnant woman.
There's also felony murder, as wirednavi points out-- any death caused during the commission of a felony (bank robbery, etc) is automatically first degree murder, even if the death was accidental. It's to ensure that violence that occurs during the commission of another felony is prosecuted as severely as possible. This law is in effect in various places.
As for the fetus, I'm not really keen on assigning fetuses legal personhood, but in this case it does seem like the fetus was born via Caesarean and then died after delivery, which is a slightly different situation than, say, someone being charged with 2 homicides for the killing of a pregnant woman.
This makes a lot of sense to me.
It sounds like one of those situations which depends on some fairly subtle legal points which a one-sentence description can't capture. The shooters weren't guilty of 1st degree because they shot a fetus in a woman's belly; they were guily of 1st degree because in the process of committing 1st degree murder a gunshot wound killed a baby after it was delivered.
From what I am reading they intended to kill someone that day. It wasn't like they pulled out a gun and started shooting at random. They attempted to shoot at someone and instead shot this poor woman and the result of that shooting was the loss of her child.
Now, while the presidence could be made later on for abortion being equal to 1st degree murder, the fact is that it hasn't. Nor will it.
Abortion is a very divisive issue. As a result, the odds that abortion will ever be taken off the books is very, very small.
Here's why, but first a disclamier.
1) I am against abortion for personal reasons. 2) I do not believe, nor will I ever believe it is the governments right to decide for someone, as this is a personal issue for everyone and that decision should be made on a person to person (or couple to couple) basis.
That said, abortion rights will never be lost for women. The simplest reason is that no lawmaker in their right (or left for that matter) mind will ever, ever, ever let someone get 5 feet from seriously pushing an anti-abortion law into the books. There's rumor of a story that a staffer for a republican congressional run tried to push his candidate towards anti-abortion laws and he was fired an hour later. The reason is so simple it's laughable.
Women vote. In fact, they are more likely to vote for someone who opposes anti-abortion laws, even if they themselves hold abortion in disdain.
I think the jurors did the right thing. I think these two (we'll call them men) were waiting for someone specific, they shot, they missed, they hit someone else, that someone was pregnant, and that child died as a result. The law is very clear on this. If you are lying in wait for a victim and you miss, the law is that you are tried under first degree murder statues and if found guilty can face the maximum penalty.
If you are lying in wait for a victim and you miss, the law is that you are tried under first degree murder statues and if found guilty can face the maximum penalty
Including if you miss completely and don't even injure someone?
If that is the case, then the fault here is perhaps with the article that is very definitely presenting it as 'these people were convicted of 1st degree murder because they caused the death of this woman's fetus'.
I think in the eventuality that you don't hurt anyone you're just liable for reckless endangerment, and associated crimes. I don't think you can get tried for murder of any degree without an actual victim - or at least the high likelihood of one.
Ok see this is something I agree with you on. Admittedly, this ruling is abit....odd.
"three counts of armed assault with intent to murder, three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and one count each of unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition."
This alone gets them put in jail for at least *thinks* 30 years to life, possible parole in 15 years, but the level of violence would make it doubtful they'd ever see the light of day. Adding the 1st degree murder charge keeps them off parole.
***me thinking*** The prosecutor didn't think they'd get 1st degree murder. They figured that the defendants would go for seperate trials and hope that one would plea down to 2nd so they could get the other on first. The defense team screwed up big time. *****************
That said (or thought) whether accidental or not, the thought that someone could kill an unborn child in such a manner with such lack of concern for others around them.
So if they had accidentally killed the student from Berkely while shooting at another man, can that be considered 1st degree murder? Do we allow people who are shooting at someone and miss to get off on 2nd degree murder because they have bad aim?
I think there are plenty of women out there who have had their access to abortion so limited that it is effectively nonexistant, and for them I don't think your statement of 'abortion rights will never be lost for women' means much.
Just because rich, white, legally-of-age american citizens living in certain states will almost certainly not lose abortion rights, does not mean such rights are adequately present for the population of people for whom they matter.
However, I don't think this is just an issue of 'Oh noes, now they can make abortion totally illegal!' I think what gives someone legal personhood, and rights and fair treatment accordingly, is something that is important. I find the apparent 'life begins at conception and ends at birth' attitude vile more because it denies individual rights and worth than because I seriously fear someone will try to force me to be a baby-machine against my will.
All vaid points, and I don't want to make it sound like the laws that are in place are near close enough to fair.
However, the point is that abortion laws are going to be debated and much like murder, abortion has been structured in much the same way. 1st trimester abortions are ok, as long as you get counseling first, 2nd degree trimesters are considered more dangerous and as such limited to certain circumstance, and 3rd trimester abortions are illegal.
THIS is what needs to be fought, not whether abortion the idea is legal, but abortion as a law. If the intent is to remove morality from the abortion, that is wrong since abortion is a personal choice and should be decided by both people involved in the making of the child (where applicable, I mean I don't expect a rape victim to hunt down the rapist and ask him if its ok to abort the child, although God knows that's a fear that keeps me up at night sometimes)
So to sum up my expansion of my previous statement,
Abortion rights are good. Abortion laws are bad. The law itself needs to be revoked and re-written so that a womans right to choose is just that, a choice, not an option.
It always seems to me that people make abortion out to be either a pro-life or pro-choice which in my opinion puts people on either side of the argument. A way to counteract that would be to word the abortion rights as options for women not a choice. A choice sounds to me like it's cheap. "your choosing to end a life" or "your choosing to have your reproductive rights taken away from you" vs. "Your options are to keep the child, or to abort the child for reasons of . . ."
It's not perfect, it might not even be right, but it's an idea. What do you think?
Ugh. I just read through all of the comments here.
I define life as beginning when the fetus leaves the mother and breathes on its own. Until then, it is just potential. And killing that potential is awful, and I am glad that these men were convicted of murder, but a potential life is still not the same as an actual life. I'm not sure that I regret that they were convicted of first degree murder, but I don't like the feeling that killing an unborn child is the same as (or worse than) killing a viable human being. But it is a tough issue.
Not that this is relevant to your question, but it is interesting to consider the progression of human life in terms of autonomy: - Abstract Autonomy: the point at which the entity is not another entity. - Biological Autonomy: the point at which, with appropriate external resources (ie food, oxygen), the entity does not require another entity for biological functions. - Mobility Autonomy: the point at which the entity has developed physically enough to not require another entity to move it around. - Communication Autonomy: the point at which the entity does not rely on a limited subset of other entities to communicate thoughts and ideas. - Mental Autonomy: the point at which the entity has sufficient resources for making it's own decisions without another entity double checking or second guessing them. - Economic Autonomy: the point at which the entity has sufficient capability to generate resources that they do not require the aid of another entity's surplus. - Social Autonomy: the point at which the entity does not require external social groupings to define itself to the social framework.
Alright, so it gets pretty muddled towards the end there. And some people probably progress at different speeds; certainly some people will never be mentally autonomous, for instance. And some people will become, for instance, Economically autonomous before becoming Mentally autonomous.
Even those can get broken down farther, and the distinctions between them are often blurred. I do think it'd be interesting to consider how those Autonomies correspond to percieved or actual levels of maturity.
I acknowledge that trying to define when 'life' begins or what level of autonomy is necessary before an entity is considered equivalent to another, or anything along those lines, is always going to be essentially a debating match; it's not something where you can apply good scientific principles to because it's not a question of facts, but the interpretation of said facts.
Well, more precisely I think that to say, for instance, you're Economically Autonomous requires a number of data points. Where do you live? What's the cost of living there? What do you do? Is there a market for what you do? Is there stability of economy that suggests the work you do will be duly compensated? Have you done enough work to earn enough resources to overcome minor to medium sized economic perturbations? Given the answers you might be economically autonomous in some situations and not in others - the one eyed man is king in the land of the blind, but just a one eyed man in the land of the seeing.
Basically, I think there are enough factors that determining precise autonomy is difficult; human beings have billions of factors involved in them. But you can get a sort of general sense, and the dividing line is clearer in some places. I guess what I'm saying is that it's not that it's impossible to calculate equivalence, just that it's extremely difficult to impossible to get the data points that would let you make an accurate determination all the time.
I was looking more at the early ones when I was talking about line blurring - the distinction between being able to exist without support from another entity, and being able to be considered a discrete entity, for instance, are not always that clear. Also, what to do with that information is a question - what does it mean for other entities that you are autonomous in way X? What does it mean for yourself?
Well, I think the line blurring exists up and down the scale - because I don't actually think it's a set of discrete points so much as an indiscrete spectrum.
What to do with the information is even less an answerable question. I suppose you could (theoretically) map it and be able to make some determinations based on groupings. Maybe. But that flies in the face of our culture's adherence to the belief of individual determination, and though I would find such data fascinating, I'm not sure it's actionable.
Well, for starters, it is just my opinion, and I am not really asking that anyone else agree with it. However, since you asked, I will try to explain myself.
1) I believe that the soul enters the body at birth. But that won't satisfy anybody but me, so it is essentially a moot point here.
2) It seems like a clear dividing point to me. Between conception and birth, things are very.... vague. As the fetus becomes more and more developed, it becomes closer to "life". But how to decide that "before this day it is a group of cells, but now it is a life" is rather tricky. By selecting the moment of separation from the mother, I have selected a clear and concise point, where it seems reasonable to say that something has fundamentally changed.
Ultimately, I don't think that the question of when life begins can be answered in any concrete way.
There are two issues going on here, one is about legal semantics and applicability of law. That I don't want to address. I am no lawyer and don't really care about about legal definitions of personhood since I suspect that they are all pretty much mistaken.
The other issue is the more interesting ethical one of whether an unborn child is on equal ethical footing with a person. Hence there is a question of whether attacking/killing an unborn has equal moral status as attacking/killing a person. Honestly my intuitions on the matter are that (in certain cases) attacking/killing an unborn does have equal moral status as attacking/killing a person, but its not because the unborn is a person.
I think that the mistake you are making is in assuming that "x is worthy of the same treatment as a person only if x is a person". In all honesty, I think an unborn can be worthy of the same respect as a person even if it isn't a person.
It has to do with the role an unborn can have in a person's life. For example, an expentant mother may actually want to have a child. In such circumstances, the unborn child is just as worthy of respect as a living child. To deprive the woman of her unborn is to deprive her of her child.
Of course, the stupid law was probably made by some idiot who was trying to send abortion doctors to jail for murder. Although it has a retarded source, that doesn't mean the law isn't mapping on to something that is ethically appropriate.
Hm, I think you may be right. Legally, I don't think I'm necessarily assuming "x is worthy of the same treatment as a person only if x is a person", which is why I like the idea of laws which differentiate the unborn from people but may apply the same penalties to killing them as to killing people. Differentiating them allows you to specifically set the penalties for certain actions for which the unborn are the victims, whereas I feel that defining the unborn as people makes them automatically equivalent to people before the law in all cases in which it doesn't specifically differentiate them. And I feel that implicitly assuming anything that applies to people also applies to the unborn would cause lots of problem cases.
However, I do think I am assuming "x is worthy of the same treatment as a person only if x is a person" on a moral level, basically. This doesn't imply that if x is not a person, x should be treated worse than a person. But I have some essential beliefs in how similarly people ought to be treated in terms of the law and just...being decent, and I don't believe that either fetuses as a class or animals as a class are necessarily equivalent to people as a class for those purposes.
I think that you are correct that, with respect to a mother's feelings or relationship, an unborn child may be equivalent to a born child. But that doesn't mean that with respect to all aspects of being, the unborn child is equivalent. Because of that, I think it is reasonable and right that the law treats unborn children similarly in certain respects, but not in others. I.e., it is probably appropriate that a mother can seek extreme legal redress for injuries caused by other people to her fetus or her child, and that there are laws limiting under what circumstances it is allowed to injure or destroy the fetus, or experiment on it. But it's also probably appropriate that while a child can be taken away from its mother because of her neglect, you just don't do that with a fetus. (Maybe that would change with higher technology, but I think there would still be enormously more opposition to the idea.)
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arianhwyvar
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 03:43 pm (UTC)Do I think they accidentally killed another human being? Yes. At 8.5 months gestation (I'm assuming 36w +/-), a normal fetus is completely viable, and if delivered will surivive. A normal fetus has a heartbeat, brain waves, and breathes, which covers the definition, in this state, of being "alive". What this article is *not* telling us (at least the part I could read) is the condition of the fetus when delivered. I have a feeling there are some extenuating circumstances here, for example, perhaps the child was delivered with a bullet wound to the aorta.
*retrieves flame retardant undies from the closet* ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 04:21 pm (UTC)However, I do not think viability can reasonably nor should be a legal dividing line between 'not a person' and 'a full individual with all the rights and legal status of any other person.'
I just don't think, as long as a human-being-to-be is physically contained inside another human being, that they should count as an independent individual. Even if they could have an independent existence, possibly with the help of medical technology, at that moment they don't. You can't shoot the fetus except by shooting the mother. You can't poison the fetus except by poisoning the mother. It may not be comfortable to think about how thin the line is separating an 8.5 month old fetus from a baby -- birth -- and yet I really feel that legally, birth is by far the best delimiter we've got for when someone counts as an individual human being in their own right.
Precedents
Date: 2007-03-27 05:36 pm (UTC)1) The technology exists to have a fetus develop in a can which you then proceed to do. Are they considered to have an independent existence from the mother?
2) Someone *can* poison a fetus without poisoning the mother; for instance, the child has a genetic disorder similar to phenylketenuria (sp?) where certain substances that will not in any way effect the mother, but can kill the child?
Re: Precedents
Date: 2007-03-27 06:33 pm (UTC)I think uterine replicators require us to do some bioethics catchup. I'm not really entirely when life and individual personhood should be considered to begin, in that case. I feel like being physically outside of another person's body, and being sustained by something other than a direct biological hookup from another person, gives you considerable points towards being considered an individual human being. On the other hand, just because we may get the ability to grow a fetus all the way from conception outside a human being doesn't mean the blastocyst is a person.
I think it is important, though, that in case 1) an injury to the fetus must be made directly to the fetus, not directly to the mother and incidentally to the fetus. I.e., to shoot a fetus in a uterine replicator in the head you have to walk into the lab where the replicators are kept, rather than shoot the mother in the abdomen, quite possibly without even knowing she's pregnant.
If someone burns down the lab and kills all the fetuses without directly intending to do so, what then? It's not the same as burning a bunch of pregnant women, since in that case you've got the obvious deaths of post-birth people. I'm not sure destroying a bunch of fetuses in replicators ought to be considered equivalent to destroying a bunch of people. I guess I like the laws which define causing the death of a fetus as a separate crime from causing the death of a person, but may treat it as as severe a crime. But you wouldn't necessarily want to treat the death of a blastocyst the same as a death of a fetus that was going to be born from the replicator tomorrow.
Then again, we don't have exact sentences for all situations of killing people either, so maybe this is another case where who and how you killed, and why and what else you were doing, just has to be taken into consideration.
2) -- well, I don't think someone is necessarily responsible for giving something to a mother to injest that they have no idea will harm her particular child. You can make a case that someone is responsible for giving things to a mother that they don't make her aware can or will harm any fetus she has. I wouldn't say that's murder, though. I think again that falls into injury to the mother, and conceivably injury to an unborn child if such laws exist, not injury to the individual person that is her fetus.
This kind of gets into the 'treat all women as pre-pregnant' business. I don't think it's necessarily anyone's job to be required to treat a woman as if she is pregnant all the time, or for her to act as if she is. I think a pregnant woman has a significant chunk of responsibility for not doing things to her body or allowing other people to that will harm her fetus. I think other people who are doing things that could have an impact on her fetus have a responsibility to allow her informed consent -- drug manufacturers, doctors, etc. I feel like there is some degree of difference here between a woman's fetus and her child; if a woman allows or enables harmful things to be given to her child, her child can be taken away from her 'for its own good', but you can't take out someone's fetus even if she is harming it. Can uterine replicators change this? Can you force someone who wants to body-birth to take their child out of their body and use a replicator because her drug addiction or whatever is harming the fetus? Seems to me that's a reproductive choice issue.
Re: Precedents
Date: 2007-03-27 11:44 pm (UTC)Such laws do exist, at least in California. If a pregnant woman is murdered they can add murder of an unborn child onto murdering the woman if the foetus is at least 8 weeks old. While I think it is a good thing to distinguish between killing a birthed person and a foetus, I think that 8 weeks is a little early for that distinction. I have no good answer as to when the line should be drawn between foetus and person. I always thought that it should be when the foetus could survive on its own outside the mother, but technology makes that possible fairly early now.
And after a nasty incident in California the Federal Government passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which can be found here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unborn_Victims_of_Violence_Act
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 04:36 pm (UTC)The article is not particularly clear on the circumstances of the case, but a reading of the definition of first degree murder could include what went on, depending on the particular state laws and whether they were attempting to prosecute a separate offense at the time. Premeditation may be made out since they were shooting at someone else entirely and had brought a gun to do so: at the very least "lying in wait" could apply. Lectlaw also includes a clause about reckless disregard for human life, which firing into a crowded subway train could easily be considered. That the person killed was not the intended target is not relevant, I think.
So I think first degree is justified, and then one has to turn to whether the unborn child was murderable. I find myself turning to asking what the mother's intent was; if her intent was to have the child, to take upon herself it's birthing and beyond, then I think it's a valid, murderable being. At the very least it is (or should be) a crime to infringe upon the mother's right to make that decision; and given the stake of human life, that is a very big right. It is hard to conceive of a worse crime against an individual that does not result in death than killing a child being carried by a mother. At the same time, I do not think that this should have bearing on whether the mother could make the same choice.
I hate to turn to the notion of property, but if someone burns down my house, intending to have burnt down my neighbor's house, and they get convicted of arson, it shouldn't infringe on my right to destroy my own property.
Of course, babies aren't property, in the strictest term. But I think you're bridging those two notions, so it's not totally invalid. The problem with pregnancy is that it throws in your face that humans are not as discrete as we would like to treat them. If I kill the mother of an unborn heir to a fortune that I would otherwise get, I really am trying to kill two people; it just happens that I have to kill one to get to the other. So I don't think it's unreasonable for the law to prosecute that, any more than it would be unreasonable for it to prosecute any sort of multiple homicide. On the other hand, it is entirely unreasonable for the law to dictate how a person procreates. That's why I like the notion of intent.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 04:57 pm (UTC)I completely agree with that.
But I do not think they are the same thing.
In fact, it is possible to imagine a society in which causing the death of a fetus was considered a worse crime than causing the death of another person. (Hell, that's sometimes the way it apparently comes out in our society.) But that doesn't have to mean the fetus has the equivalent rights, status, or existence, or greater rights, status, or existence, than a born human being.
I absolutely do not think someone's 'intent' to have a child should have a bearing on the rights or status as a legal human being of that future child. I'm finding the notion of where that would extend to pretty alarming -- does an unwanted child have fewer rights? Can you abort a week before full-term because you don't want the child anymore? Because it's the wrong race or has a disability? Is causing someone to lose their fertility the equivalent of murdering their children-in-potentia? Spilling sperm or eggs in a fertility clinic? Accidentally destroying or damaging frozen embryos?
At the very least it is (or should be) a crime to infringe upon the mother's right to make that decision; and given the stake of human life, that is a very big right.
I agree. I see an injury or other negative consequence someone causes to a fetus as a crime against the mother -- possibly a crime very close to killing a human in its severity -- but it is a crime against the mother whose body contained the fetus, not against the fetus as an individual entirely in its own right.
For example, you should not be able to bring lawsuits 'on behalf of the fetus' that do not also have the mother as victim. Such as, against the mother or an abortion provider for attempting a medical abortion, or against the mother for 'harming her baby in utero' through drinking, putting herself at risk of physical injury, etc.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 05:28 pm (UTC)But is that not how it is? If you allow abortion, then the status of the child until the point of birth is entirely by grant of the mother. If the mother intends to give that child life and thereby the rights of any other human being, then they should have them. If anyone takes away the mother's ability to give birth and thereby pass on those rights, they are
I'm finding the notion of where that would extend to pretty alarming -- does an unwanted child have fewer rights?
They do currently. You find out you're pregnant, you don't want the kid, and you can get an abortion (in most cases). The child's rights are nonexistent.
But, in point of fact, all children have fewer rights. It's not like at some point in time you're granted all the rights the government (and therefore society) extends to which you're entitled. You get some at birth, some maybe before birth, some at sixteen, some at eighteen, some at twenty one, some at sixty four. There are issues of autonomy tied up in all of that; can a three year old really vote? (My opinion, ftr: yes!) And society has always provided a certain backstop; when you're 18, your parents lose the legal right to make a lot of decisions about your life. But previous to that there are plenty of examples where parents get to choose for you. And there are examples of life-and-death situations; if a child is in a coma, they might come out of it. But the parents get to choose to turn off the respirator. Now, they can listen to your wishes on the matter and extend your rights through their own - up until you get those rights in your own right. But they are considered gatekeepers.
All in all, it's not a terrible model. Can it be extended to this?
Can you abort a week before full-term because you don't want the child anymore?
This is, of course, the Question. When do you draw the temporal line, and why?
Because it's the wrong race or has a disability?
I think the eugenics angle causes some distortion. People abort babies for all sorts of reasons, and I wager ten to one that they don't, in most cases, have a clear understanding why. Most people in most cases don't have a clear understanding why they do the things they do. It is generally enough for us, though, to know that we choose to do them. Is it the mother's choice or not? If it is, does society have the right to question the reasoning? I think this is a fundamentally different question than 'what rights are extended to an unborn child and when and how are those rights extended?'
Is causing someone to lose their fertility the equivalent of murdering their children-in-potentia? Spilling sperm or eggs in a fertility clinic? Accidentally destroying or damaging frozen embryos?
Generally speaking, intent has to have some backing in action. Saying "I was going to do [x]" does not have the same weight as, "Dude, I was seven months into doing [x]." Also, one should probably take into account the actual damage; if you have a seven-month fetus in your belly, there is far more actual damage being caused than if your test tube is spilled.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 06:01 pm (UTC)As you say, intent has to have some backing in action. No, I don't think that's how it is -- the fetus's status and rights are the same at a given instant regardless of whether the mother intends to have an abortion tomorrow or intends to carry through with the preganancy even if it means dying in childbirth. It's the same whether someone has replaced the mother's breakfast coffee with a poison that's going to cause her to miscarry if/when she drinks it the next morning. No matter what she thinks now, maybe in a month she'll discover her child has a horrific birth defect and wouldn't survive days beyond birth, and decide to abort. Or maybe she'll win the lottery and the approval of her spouse and family and decide she wants to keep and raise this child after all. You can't say 'she was going to give the baby up for adoption, so it doesn't matter to her that I killed it'; you can't say 'she was thinking she might have an abortion, so it didn't matter that I made her miscarry, even though now she wants to sue me.' She could have gotten to the abortion clinic and decided she was going to have the baby after all. It happens. And maybe be more devoted to that child than a woman who never even considered the possibility of abortion.
A woman who particularly wanted or didn't want her child to be born might care to a different extent about litigating injury to her fetus. But I don't think her plans for the future at that second should determine legally what sort of criminal action someone took in injuring her fetus, or what the legal status and rights of the fetus are. You can talk all you like about how you don't want to have a kid, but if you don't end your pregnancy, and you give birth, the kid's a legal human being. (Yes, being a legal human being doesn't give everyone the same rights by any stretch, but it does give you some.) You can talk all you like about how you want to see your kid graduate from college, but if you shake your baby too hard at 3 days and it dies...never happens.
Yes, being seven months into doing [x] matters. But it matters because of the current status -- 7 months pregnant -- which admittedly assumes something about there being a child at the end of that, but isn't based on 'in 2 months this could be a person, because I don't plan to do anything to stop that from happening' as opposed to 'I'm not going to moderate my drug use, so in a couple weeks I'll overdose and miscarry.'
However, it's true that in reality (and in most states), individual rights are more of a continuum, and certainly aren't treated as a not-a-person/person-with-all-individual-rights divide across the time of birth.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 06:23 pm (UTC)On the other hand, I don't think that you can charge a mother with murder for aborting a child because the intent isn't there anymore. It's somewhat paradoxical, I admit, that the aborting of the child proves the intent of not wanting it and therefore it's legality, but it makes some sense to me.
I suppose the difficulty I'm wrestling with internally is the notion you allude to of the mother who is pregnant but isn't caring for the child; who is drinking or otherwise damaging the child. You are forced to either say that the government requires a hand in childbirth (they have the right/duty to prevent you from damaging the child in utero) or that the mother extends only what rights she chooses to the child (including the right to life, the right to not be damaged, etc.). I think this is an extremely difficult question to answer in a world of emerging understanding about how things affect children for the rest of their lives; nutrition, habit, etc.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 05:36 pm (UTC)So basically --
1) How this type of thing gets prosecuted depends very much on the first degree murder laws of your state, which could include any number of things that we wouldn't really think of as murder at all, and certainly weren't premeditated; or could require premeditation. I'm not sure what the law is in MA.
2) I hate the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. I disagreed with it when they were passing it, too.
3) In many cases the Unborn Victims of Violence Act doesn't apply, since it applies only when prosecuting Federal crimes.
4) If the baby was born and briefly alive, it counts as a person (since it was born), and if it then dies because of something that occurred in utero, that could be prosecuted as murder since there was a living human being who died because of these people's actions. That seems to be what actually happened in this case -- the baby was successfully delivered through caesarian, and died 45 minutes later.
And, I suppose, basically the same situation could have occurred if, say, the mother had her baby in her arms or in a backpack and it was killed by this shot that was intended for someone else, while only wounding her. Then I wouldn't feel weird at all for this conviction; as it is I'm uncomfortable with the notion that what these men actually performed was a fatal injury to someone that was not a person (as well as a nonfatal injury to a person), but what they are being convicted for is a fatal injury to a person.
I guess it bothers me because the situation changed, through no action of the criminals, to make their conviction much more severe. ...Then again, I guess it's true that the exact same thing happens in terms of whether someone dies or doesn't die whenever they are injured by someone else: you will get charged with killing them or not get charged with killing them depending on the doctors' efforts and success, not based on any difference in what you actually did. True?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 05:46 pm (UTC)The first-degree murder charge was pretty simple - they committed murder during their (pretty clearly) premeditated plan for committing another crime. That makes it first-degree, pretty much anywhere, I think - if you go into a shop to rob it with a gun and end up shooting people, that's first-degree.
(Wow, I don't have any appropriate icons.)
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 10:15 pm (UTC)That is essentially correct. The intent, or mens rea, is a very significant aspect of criminal law. If they intended to shoot person A, but shoot person B by mistake, they are not charged with accidentally shooting person B, but intentially shooting person B, because they intended to shoot person A. They intended to kill someone, they fired a gun, and someone died; that they killed the "wrong" person is irrelevant. (You can also be charged with attempted murder for shooting an inanimate object if you thought it was a person at the time.) It is also the case that criminal laws may vary in specifics from state to state.
There's also felony murder, as
As for the fetus, I'm not really keen on assigning fetuses legal personhood, but in this case it does seem like the fetus was born via Caesarean and then died after delivery, which is a slightly different situation than, say, someone being charged with 2 homicides for the killing of a pregnant woman.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 12:29 am (UTC)As for the fetus, I'm not really keen on assigning fetuses legal personhood, but in this case it does seem like the fetus was born via Caesarean and then died after delivery, which is a slightly different situation than, say, someone being charged with 2 homicides for the killing of a pregnant woman.
This makes a lot of sense to me.
It sounds like one of those situations which depends on some fairly subtle legal points which a one-sentence description can't capture. The shooters weren't guilty of 1st degree because they shot a fetus in a woman's belly; they were guily of 1st degree because in the process of committing 1st degree murder a gunshot wound killed a baby after it was delivered.
Intent...
Date: 2007-03-27 04:59 pm (UTC)From what I am reading they intended to kill someone that day. It wasn't like they pulled out a gun and started shooting at random. They attempted to shoot at someone and instead shot this poor woman and the result of that shooting was the loss of her child.
Now, while the presidence could be made later on for abortion being equal to 1st degree murder, the fact is that it hasn't. Nor will it.
Abortion is a very divisive issue. As a result, the odds that abortion will ever be taken off the books is very, very small.
Here's why, but first a disclamier.
1) I am against abortion for personal reasons.
2) I do not believe, nor will I ever believe it is the governments right to decide for someone, as this is a personal issue for everyone and that decision should be made on a person to person (or couple to couple) basis.
That said, abortion rights will never be lost for women. The simplest reason is that no lawmaker in their right (or left for that matter) mind will ever, ever, ever let someone get 5 feet from seriously pushing an anti-abortion law into the books. There's rumor of a story that a staffer for a republican congressional run tried to push his candidate towards anti-abortion laws and he was fired an hour later. The reason is so simple it's laughable.
Women vote. In fact, they are more likely to vote for someone who opposes anti-abortion laws, even if they themselves hold abortion in disdain.
I think the jurors did the right thing. I think these two (we'll call them men) were waiting for someone specific, they shot, they missed, they hit someone else, that someone was pregnant, and that child died as a result. The law is very clear on this. If you are lying in wait for a victim and you miss, the law is that you are tried under first degree murder statues and if found guilty can face the maximum penalty.
Re: Intent...
Date: 2007-03-27 05:02 pm (UTC)Including if you miss completely and don't even injure someone?
If that is the case, then the fault here is perhaps with the article that is very definitely presenting it as 'these people were convicted of 1st degree murder because they caused the death of this woman's fetus'.
Re: Intent...
Date: 2007-03-27 05:30 pm (UTC)Re: Intent...
Date: 2007-03-27 10:17 pm (UTC)Re: Intent...
Date: 2007-03-27 05:32 pm (UTC)"three counts of armed assault with intent to murder, three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and one count each of unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition."
This alone gets them put in jail for at least *thinks* 30 years to life, possible parole in 15 years, but the level of violence would make it doubtful they'd ever see the light of day. Adding the 1st degree murder charge keeps them off parole.
***me thinking***
The prosecutor didn't think they'd get 1st degree murder. They figured that the defendants would go for seperate trials and hope that one would plea down to 2nd so they could get the other on first. The defense team screwed up big time.
*****************
That said (or thought) whether accidental or not, the thought that someone could kill an unborn child in such a manner with such lack of concern for others around them.
So if they had accidentally killed the student from Berkely while shooting at another man, can that be considered 1st degree murder? Do we allow people who are shooting at someone and miss to get off on 2nd degree murder because they have bad aim?
Re: Intent...
Date: 2007-03-27 05:13 pm (UTC)Just because rich, white, legally-of-age american citizens living in certain states will almost certainly not lose abortion rights, does not mean such rights are adequately present for the population of people for whom they matter.
However, I don't think this is just an issue of 'Oh noes, now they can make abortion totally illegal!' I think what gives someone legal personhood, and rights and fair treatment accordingly, is something that is important. I find the apparent 'life begins at conception and ends at birth' attitude vile more because it denies individual rights and worth than because I seriously fear someone will try to force me to be a baby-machine against my will.
Re: Intent...
Date: 2007-03-27 05:42 pm (UTC)However, the point is that abortion laws are going to be debated and much like murder, abortion has been structured in much the same way. 1st trimester abortions are ok, as long as you get counseling first, 2nd degree trimesters are considered more dangerous and as such limited to certain circumstance, and 3rd trimester abortions are illegal.
THIS is what needs to be fought, not whether abortion the idea is legal, but abortion as a law. If the intent is to remove morality from the abortion, that is wrong since abortion is a personal choice and should be decided by both people involved in the making of the child (where applicable, I mean I don't expect a rape victim to hunt down the rapist and ask him if its ok to abort the child, although God knows that's a fear that keeps me up at night sometimes)
So to sum up my expansion of my previous statement,
Abortion rights are good. Abortion laws are bad. The law itself needs to be revoked and re-written so that a womans right to choose is just that, a choice, not an option.
Re: Intent...
Date: 2007-03-27 06:05 pm (UTC)Re: Intent...
Date: 2007-03-27 06:14 pm (UTC)It's not perfect, it might not even be right, but it's an idea. What do you think?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 06:13 pm (UTC)I define life as beginning when the fetus leaves the mother and breathes on its own. Until then, it is just potential. And killing that potential is awful, and I am glad that these men were convicted of murder, but a potential life is still not the same as an actual life. I'm not sure that I regret that they were convicted of first degree murder, but I don't like the feeling that killing an unborn child is the same as (or worse than) killing a viable human being. But it is a tough issue.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 07:01 pm (UTC)- Abstract Autonomy: the point at which the entity is not another entity.
- Biological Autonomy: the point at which, with appropriate external resources (ie food, oxygen), the entity does not require another entity for biological functions.
- Mobility Autonomy: the point at which the entity has developed physically enough to not require another entity to move it around.
- Communication Autonomy: the point at which the entity does not rely on a limited subset of other entities to communicate thoughts and ideas.
- Mental Autonomy: the point at which the entity has sufficient resources for making it's own decisions without another entity double checking or second guessing them.
- Economic Autonomy: the point at which the entity has sufficient capability to generate resources that they do not require the aid of another entity's surplus.
- Social Autonomy: the point at which the entity does not require external social groupings to define itself to the social framework.
Alright, so it gets pretty muddled towards the end there. And some people probably progress at different speeds; certainly some people will never be mentally autonomous, for instance. And some people will become, for instance, Economically autonomous before becoming Mentally autonomous.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 07:07 pm (UTC)I acknowledge that trying to define when 'life' begins or what level of autonomy is necessary before an entity is considered equivalent to another, or anything along those lines, is always going to be essentially a debating match; it's not something where you can apply good scientific principles to because it's not a question of facts, but the interpretation of said facts.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 07:13 pm (UTC)Basically, I think there are enough factors that determining precise autonomy is difficult; human beings have billions of factors involved in them. But you can get a sort of general sense, and the dividing line is clearer in some places. I guess what I'm saying is that it's not that it's impossible to calculate equivalence, just that it's extremely difficult to impossible to get the data points that would let you make an accurate determination all the time.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 07:20 pm (UTC)What to do with the information is even less an answerable question. I suppose you could (theoretically) map it and be able to make some determinations based on groupings. Maybe. But that flies in the face of our culture's adherence to the belief of individual determination, and though I would find such data fascinating, I'm not sure it's actionable.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 12:52 am (UTC)1) I believe that the soul enters the body at birth. But that won't satisfy anybody but me, so it is essentially a moot point here.
2) It seems like a clear dividing point to me. Between conception and birth, things are very.... vague. As the fetus becomes more and more developed, it becomes closer to "life". But how to decide that "before this day it is a group of cells, but now it is a life" is rather tricky. By selecting the moment of separation from the mother, I have selected a clear and concise point, where it seems reasonable to say that something has fundamentally changed.
Ultimately, I don't think that the question of when life begins can be answered in any concrete way.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 07:26 pm (UTC)The other issue is the more interesting ethical one of whether an unborn child is on equal ethical footing with a person. Hence there is a question of whether attacking/killing an unborn has equal moral status as attacking/killing a person. Honestly my intuitions on the matter are that (in certain cases) attacking/killing an unborn does have equal moral status as attacking/killing a person, but its not because the unborn is a person.
I think that the mistake you are making is in assuming that "x is worthy of the same treatment as a person only if x is a person". In all honesty, I think an unborn can be worthy of the same respect as a person even if it isn't a person.
It has to do with the role an unborn can have in a person's life. For example, an expentant mother may actually want to have a child. In such circumstances, the unborn child is just as worthy of respect as a living child. To deprive the woman of her unborn is to deprive her of her child.
Of course, the stupid law was probably made by some idiot who was trying to send abortion doctors to jail for murder. Although it has a retarded source, that doesn't mean the law isn't mapping on to something that is ethically appropriate.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 09:19 pm (UTC)However, I do think I am assuming "x is worthy of the same treatment as a person only if x is a person" on a moral level, basically. This doesn't imply that if x is not a person, x should be treated worse than a person. But I have some essential beliefs in how similarly people ought to be treated in terms of the law and just...being decent, and I don't believe that either fetuses as a class or animals as a class are necessarily equivalent to people as a class for those purposes.
I think that you are correct that, with respect to a mother's feelings or relationship, an unborn child may be equivalent to a born child. But that doesn't mean that with respect to all aspects of being, the unborn child is equivalent. Because of that, I think it is reasonable and right that the law treats unborn children similarly in certain respects, but not in others. I.e., it is probably appropriate that a mother can seek extreme legal redress for injuries caused by other people to her fetus or her child, and that there are laws limiting under what circumstances it is allowed to injure or destroy the fetus, or experiment on it. But it's also probably appropriate that while a child can be taken away from its mother because of her neglect, you just don't do that with a fetus. (Maybe that would change with higher technology, but I think there would still be enormously more opposition to the idea.)