Infanticide and Late Term Abortion

[Belthazor]

OK, I stand corrected. But in that case, you have not yet shown any inconsistencies.

Well then, prepare to stand corrected again...

Actually I supported it with two links, but as those cases seem to have left you less than impressed let us see what the gov't actually has to say on the subject. It doesn't seem to match well with how you have been presenting it. To wit:
The little human is a person while in the womb with a right to life and killing it (other than "legal" abortion) is a crime and not an "injury to the mother" as you propose.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/...tate-laws.aspx
"Common references to such laws include the Fetal Protection Act, the Preborn Victims of Violence Act and the Unborn Victim of Violence Act. Those supporting these laws say that both the lives of the pregnant woman and the fetus should be explicitly protected. They assert that fetal homicide laws justly criminalize these cases and address both unborn children and their mothers."

Further, the distinction you propose as to the "value of the life increasing over time" runs quite counter to actual law:
"At least 29 states have fetal homicide laws that apply to the earliest stages of pregnancy ("any state of gestation/development," "conception," "fertilization" or "post-fertilization");

So, a person from conception in at least 29 states.
In AZ for instance:
" The law specifies that the defendant shall not be released until the completion of 35 years if the murdered person was under 15 years of age or was an unborn child. The law states that for the purposes of punishment, an unborn child shall be treated like a minor under 12 years of age."


Note there is no reference to the stage of the "unborn child" changing anything in the 38 states referenced.

---------- Post added at 04:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:47 PM ----------

In cases where a legal person effectively loses autonomy, someone else takes control. In the case of a fetus, the person in control defaults to it's mother.

1. And when can this "someone else takes control" allowed to kill the life they are now responsible for?

2. Did you know pregnant woman can be arrested for not taking proper care of their fetus?
https://www.thenation.com/article/pr...-helps-no-one/
"Dischman has been in prison since June, when she overdosed on heroin seven months into her pregnancy, delivered prematurely, and was charged with felony aggravated assault of an unborn child."

All true.

As such, the next time SCOTUS takes up the subject it may likely turn out quite differently

But regardless of that, Drunk Drivers are something you can't control. The same goes for whether you get pregnant when having sex. You can take measures, but you can't control the situation 100%. Nor can you when you are driving a car.

1. You had no part of the drunk drivers decisions.
2. Women certainly have some control of getting pregnant.
3. Are you aware female tonsils are 100% effective as a birth control.
4. There are lots of ways to have sex that do not involve intercourse.
5. A single method of birth control can be 99% effective, use more than one and chances are very remote.
6. The number of pregnancies that occur when one uses birth control would be a incredibly small number compared to the current abortions overall.

No, it doesn't. I've had sex with a few women in my life. None of them agreed to be a mother. (BTW: You are using the word explicit whin you should use implicit. Explicit would be "**** me, I want a baby!"

Either you raped them or they knew they could get pregnant.
That is consent.

Because this particular dead human doesn't have much moral value. I think I've explained that before.

Yes you claim this based on fuzzy criteria with no clear definition and I have shown many can apply to other groups a well...

You keep blurring the line between moral decisions and legal decisions.
Legally, it is not in any way shaky because said human has no rights.

It is a legal matter after all, especially since we have agreed morals seem to be subjective.
It has a right to life in all other cases except (at the moment) when the mother wants to kill it and there are still a number of restrictions on that because of this fact (in at least 38 states)!

[CowboyX]

Either you raped them or they knew they could get pregnant.
That is consent.

Humans have sex for more reasons than just reproduction.

Is it possible to carry all pregnancies to full term?

[Sigfried]

Well then, prepare to stand corrected again...

Actually I supported it with two links, but as those cases seem to have left you less than impressed let us see what the gov't actually has to say on the subject. It doesn't seem to match well with how you have been presenting it. To wit:
The little human is a person while in the womb with a right to life and killing it (other than "legal" abortion) is a crime and not an "injury to the mother" as you propose.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/...tate-laws.aspx
"Common references to such laws include the Fetal Protection Act, the Preborn Victims of Violence Act and the Unborn Victim of Violence Act. Those supporting these laws say that both the lives of the pregnant woman and the fetus should be explicitly protected. They assert that fetal homicide laws justly criminalize these cases and address both unborn children and their mothers."

Further, the distinction you propose as to the "value of the life increasing over time" runs quite counter to actual law:
"At least 29 states have fetal homicide laws that apply to the earliest stages of pregnancy ("any state of gestation/development," "conception," "fertilization" or "post-fertilization");

So, a person from conception in at least 29 states.
In AZ for instance:
" The law specifies that the defendant shall not be released until the completion of 35 years if the murdered person was under 15 years of age or was an unborn child. The law states that for the purposes of punishment, an unborn child shall be treated like a minor under 12 years of age."

Note there is no reference to the stage of the "unborn child" changing anything in the 38 states referenced.

You are looking to show contradictions in the law. But, you are dealing with state laws (which are different in nearly every state) and federal law which overrides state law when the two are in conflict.

Federal law does not recognize a fetus as a constitutional person. It is not protected by the bill of rights the way an adult is or even the way a corporation or a church is. They don't have a federal right to life.

These state laws ascribe value to the fetus, but it doesn't imbue it with rights at the federal level. And when these state laws come into conflict with a federal right, like a woman's right to privacy, the federal right supersedes the state law.

"Note there is no reference to the stage of the "unborn child" changing anything in the 38 states referenced"

Except...
Maryland: establishes that a prosecution may be instituted for murder or manslaughter of a viable fetus as defined in Md.
Massachusetts: a viable fetus is within the ambit of the term "person" in the vehicular homicide statute.
Michigan: defines the willful killing of an unborn quick child
Mississippi: related to the death of an unborn quick child.
Rhode Island: defines "quick child." The willful killing of an unborn quick child by any injury to the mother of that child is deemed manslaughter.
Washington: declares that a person is guilty of manslaughter in the first degree when he or she intentionally and unlawfully kills an unborn quick child by inflicting any injury upon the mother of such a child.

And all of them cite the fact that federal law prevents these from being applied to the case of abortion. If they didn't there would be a contradiction and they would be unconstitutional laws and therefore unenforcible.

1. And when can this "someone else takes control" allowed to kill the life they are now responsible for?

The grammar of the sentence is very confusing such that I can't answer it. Are you asking when can someone else take control? or Can the party that takes control then kill the child?

2. Did you know pregnant woman can be arrested for not taking proper care of their fetus?
https://www.thenation.com/article/pr...-helps-no-one/
"Dischman has been in prison since June, when she overdosed on heroin seven months into her pregnancy, delivered prematurely, and was charged with felony aggravated assault of an unborn child."

She has been in prison, but she has not been convicted of a crime. If you read the article, you will find she is being held on another misdemeanor charge, not for this assault charge. Her lawyer has correctly pointed out that: " the law says the commonwealth cannot prosecute pregnant women for their conduct during pregnancy" And a judge agreed but the government appealed and in the meantime, she is stuck in prison despite clearly having not violated the law.

As such, the next time SCOTUS takes up the subject it may likely turn out quite differently

Probably not.

1. You had no part of the drunk drivers decisions.

Nor do we control our sperm or eggs.

2. Women certainly have some control of getting pregnant.

Some, but not all.

3. Are you aware female tonsils are 100% effective as a birth control.

Humor?

4. There are lots of ways to have sex that do not involve intercourse.

Irrelevant.

5. A single method of birth control can be 99% effective, use more than one and chances are very remote.

So is being hit by a drunk driver. Though it did happen to me once.

6. The number of pregnancies that occur when one uses birth control would be a incredibly small number compared to the current abortions overall.

Also irrelevant.

Either you raped them or they knew they could get pregnant.
That is consent.

Nope, could ain't would my man.

Yes you claim this based on fuzzy criteria with no clear definition and I have shown many can apply to other groups a well...

I don't find it to be so fuzzy, it's quite clear for me. That doesn't mean it works for you. But as you agreed to elsewhere, morality is subjective.

It is a legal matter after all, especially since we have agreed morals seem to be subjective.

Of course, there is a legal matter, but the legal arguments and moral arguments are not the same. It helps to be clear which one you are addressing.

It has a right to life in all other cases except (at the moment) when the mother wants to kill it and there are still a number of restrictions on that because of this fact (in at least 38 states)!

No, it doesn't have a right to life in the same way you do under the US constitution. A number of states have criminal statutes for killing a fetus. Those two things are not the same.

[mican333]

Either you raped them or they knew they could get pregnant.
That is consent.

Consent to sex. Not consent to get pregnant.

Consent is an agreement to X, not agreement to something other than X that could possibly result in X (especially if the person definitely doesn't want X). The very fact that the woman does not want to get pregnant means that if she does get pregnant, she did not consent to pregnancy.

You are clearly engaging in the equivocation fallacy when you blur the definition of "consent" to include activities that might happen if one consents to something else.

So no, consent to sex is not automatically consent to pregnancy even if a pregnancy results. Consent to pregnancy is "I want to get pregnant and am engaging in sex with the hopes of getting pregnant".

[Belthazor]

No, it doesn't have a right to life in the same way you do under the US constitution.

Please show me in the US constitution where it speaks of a fetus rights or lack there of.

(Not the 1973 SCOTUS interpretation of the constitution or any other interpretation for that matter.)


You have argeed the unborn is a human life, so where in the constitution does it say the 14th amendment does not apply until this human life exits the womb?

[Sigfried]

Please show me in the US constitution where it speaks of a fetus rights or lack there of.
(Not the 1973 SCOTUS interpretation of the constitution or any other interpretation for that matter.)

Nowhere. Nor does it speak to the rights of dogs or cats, nor to computers or turnbuckles. Nor does it delineate the rights of humans.

The language used in the bill of rights is "people" or "persons" and sometimes a specific class like "soldier"

"Person" has been defined to not include the unborn humans among us by the supreme court and they are the arbiter of what the legal understanding of the constitution is.

[Belthazor]

Nowhere. Nor does it speak to the rights of dogs or cats, nor to computers or turnbuckles. Nor does it delineate the rights of humans.

The language used in the bill of rights is "people" or "persons" and sometimes a specific class like "soldier"

So it is your claim that the founding fathers made the distinction between "humans" and "people/persons"?

"Person" has been defined to not include the unborn humans among us by the supreme court and they are the arbiter of what the legal understanding of the constitution is.

I specifically asked you to defend your claim about the constitution without using opinions. Since you have not been able to do that, your claim that:
"No, it doesn't have a right to life in the same way you do under the US constitution."

is completely unsupported.

What a particular court's opinion of the Constitution may be, is irrelevant to my question.

[Ibelsd]

Consent to sex. Not consent to get pregnant.

Consent is an agreement to X, not agreement to something other than X that could possibly result in X (especially if the person definitely doesn't want X). The very fact that the woman does not want to get pregnant means that if she does get pregnant, she did not consent to pregnancy.

You are clearly engaging in the equivocation fallacy when you blur the definition of "consent" to include activities that might happen if one consents to something else.

So no, consent to sex is not automatically consent to pregnancy even if a pregnancy results. Consent to pregnancy is "I want to get pregnant and am engaging in sex with the hopes of getting pregnant".

So, if a person who drink and drives kills a person, from your logic, that person may not be tried for murder. Murder is the willful act of killing another person. However, the driver, by drinking alcohol, almost certainly didn't "consent" to killing someone.

Murder is defined as:
"the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another."

So, what I am really getting to here is that a woman may not have specifically consented to getting pregnant by extension of her consent to sex. However, she certainly should have known of the potential consequences of her consent making her pregnancy an extension of that consent. No different than an alcohol impaired driver from being charged with a premeditated killing. I suppose you may argue that consent is somehow different from premeditation and therefore my analogy is flawed. The point here, is that both premeditation and consent infer a willful act. The conclusion is that someone who consents to sex and gets pregnant has committed a willful act not just of the sexual act itself, but of any consequences that are generally associated with such an act (i.e. pregnancy).

---------- Post added at 09:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:45 AM ----------

So it is your claim that the founding fathers made the distinction between "humans" and "people/persons"?




I specifically asked you to defend your claim about the constitution without using opinions. Since you have not been able to do that, your claim that:
"No, it doesn't have a right to life in the same way you do under the US constitution."

is completely unsupported.

What a particular court's opinion of the Constitution may be, is irrelevant to my question.

This is a silly claim you are making. Obviously, the courts have differentiated between a human and a person for purposes of legality. Spiritually, you may have a different take. When does a human infer person-hood is the question being asked here. And, while there is no absolutely right answer, we use the courts to set these ambiguous limits to some degree. As a conservative, you don't get to pick and choose the laws and jurisprudence convenient to your case. You may disagree with the court and hope it gets overturned one day. Fine. But, to simply deny the courts have made the distinction is false. Row v Wade is a real court case with a real decision. Like it or not. According to the courts, our best arbiter of what the founders may have meant, person-hood and human have subtly different connotations as it relates to the law. Children are humans and persons under the law, but they have an abridged set of rights. Why? Is this Constitutional? Well, the courts have generally determined that minors are dependents and some of their rights due to them by their person-hood is deferred to their parents or to the state. As one gets older, even as a minor, more and more of the rights conferred upon persons are granted to the human before the court. At what point does person-hood begin? This is entirely subjective, but the courts have generally held that it does not truly occur until birth. And do you want this to be different? Should unborn children be granted social security numbers? Food stamps? Do they have a right to education while inside the womb? What rights would you like to confer upon them? Just the right to get out of the belly? Then what? When does a fetus's right to be born start? Is using a condom an act of murder?

I do agree that at some point, abortion is just unethical. There is a point when that fetus, even still inside the mother's womb, should have the right to be born. I just don't have an absolute idea when that starts and I think reasonable people can disagree on this point.

[mican333]

So, if a person who drink and drives kills a person, from your logic, that person may not be tried for murder. Murder is the willful act of killing another person. However, the driver, by drinking alcohol, almost certainly didn't "consent" to killing someone.

Murder is defined as:
[FONT=Roboto]"the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another."

So, what I am really getting to here is that a woman may not have specifically consented to getting pregnant by extension of her consent to sex. However, she certainly should have known of the potential consequences of her consent making her pregnancy an extension of that consent. No different than an alcohol impaired driver from being charged with a premeditated killing. I suppose you may argue that consent is somehow different from premeditation and therefore my analogy is flawed.

Actually, I would argue that the notion that accidentally killing someone in a drunk driving accident should not be considered premeditated murder but manslaughter. Just because the law says otherwise does not mean that I must agree with it.

The point here, is that both premeditation and consent infer a willful act. The conclusion is that someone who consents to sex and gets pregnant has committed a willful act not just of the sexual act itself, but of any consequences that are generally associated with such an act (i.e. pregnancy).

Which is a flawed conclusion. One only consents to what they actually agree to. I choose to drive my car and am aware that I may die in a car accident anytime I go driving. But one cannot say that I gave consent to die in a car accident if such an accident were to happen.

[Belthazor]

This is a silly claim you are making. Obviously, the courts have differentiated between a human and a person for purposes of legality.

Again, Sig's claim is:
"No, it doesn't have a right to life in the same way you do under the US constitution."

I asked him to support this claim using the Constitution and NOT a court opinion (neither of you have).
How courts have "differentiated between a person and human" doesn't apply to what the Constitution actually says.

Though, the 1973 Roe v Wade Court agrees with you two, you both make it sound like it is spelled out in the Constitution which it is not.
IOW, the next "Court interpretation" may not agree with you two since it is open to interpretation.

So, the Constitution does not treat a fetus right to life differently than a human/person/me/whatever term you like, because it doesn't specifically speak to it at all...

I do agree that at some point, abortion is just unethical. There is a point when that fetus, even still inside the mother's womb, should have the right to be born.

Why do you think this? What is it about this "point" that then everything changes?
or perhaps
What things give a fetus the "right to be born"?

Why should there be a right to life at all, at any stage of life from conception to elderly?

[Sigfried]

So it is your claim that the founding fathers made the distinction between "humans" and "people/persons"?

Absolutely. It is a well-established fact.

I specifically asked you to defend your claim about the constitution without using opinions. Since you have not been able to do that, your claim that:
"No, it doesn't have a right to life in the same way you do under the US constitution."

You could tell me to stand up without using my legs but it would be a foolish request. The supreme court is the final arbiter of what the constitution says or does not say. To argue what it says without addressing SCOTUS is just arguing your own personal opinion about it, but your personal opinion does not make it law, and whether something is constitutional or not, is a matter of law.

[mican333]

Sig & Bel,

I think you may be arguing at cross-purposes a bit as in one of you is arguing "is" and the other is arguing "should" in regards to abortion law.

So maybe this will help.

Under current law, it is a fact that the unborn do not have the same rights as the born. The evidence that this is so is indisputable. Abortion is not uniformly illegal in the same way that murder of a born person is uniformly illegal. If the unborn and the born had the same rights under the law, the killing of the born and the unborn would carry the same legal sanctions. I'm not going to get into the legal reasoning why this is so because I've not researched the issue well enough to give good info and likewise I'm not necessarily entering your debate but just stating something that might help (but I will likely respond if I'm addressed).

And of course this does not equate a valid reasoning for keeping abortion legal since you can't justify the current law by noting their existence (to do so would be to engage in the is/ought fallacy). So there's plenty of debate to be had on what the law should be but the current legal status of the unborn is pretty clear.

[Sigfried]

And of course this does not equate a valid reasoning for keeping abortion legal since you can't justify the current law by noting their existence (to do so would be to engage in the is/ought fallacy). So there's plenty of debate to be had on what the law should be but the current legal status of the unborn is pretty clear.

I'm with you Mican. We've argued about both the is and ought but Bel kind of dances back and forth between the two concepts freely and thus so do my responses.

It may be partly because I generally support the current court president on abortion as being a valid and wise arbitration of the issue. I've explained why in the course of the thread.

Ben is the one who brought up the constitution and seems to claim it protects the life of the fetus, but he hasn't put up any positive evidence for this claim. He seemed to assume I'd see "person" as synonymous with "human".

[mican333]

Ben is the one who brought up the constitution and seems to claim it protects the life of the fetus, but he hasn't put up any positive evidence for this claim. He seemed to assume I'd see "person" as synonymous with "human".

I think the argument he is making is (in my words):

You are claiming that the fetus does not have the same protections that the constitution gives born people. But where in the constitution does it say that? Assuming it doesn't say any such thing, you cannot argue that the constitution denies the unborn the same rights are born people.

For the record, I am not saying that that is a good argument but I think that's what he is arguing. Just trying to help clear things up.

[Sigfried]

For the record, I am not saying that that is a good argument but I think that's what he is arguing. Just trying to help clear things up.

That was also my understanding of his argument. And that would be a legal argument rather than an ethical one so I gave him a legal argument back.