http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jFVB6mDbG21e7XuCBbyfUS1DCJHQ?docId=83b9fc9a458d4179b2349b9f6cf31ec1

How can attempted murder be a charge for something that is not a living being? Perhaps it is a living being if only the mother wants it to be? Could someone explain how the fetus is a living human being in some cases and not others. Should all fetus have the same rights or should none of them?

Is it only me who sees a double standard?

The other charges of abduction and weapons violations are fine, but attempted murder?

The miracles of the US justice system is my guess.

I'm with Faxmonkey and you, Brad. It makes a mockery of the law, to be honest. I believe that there have been cases where a pregnant woman was killed and the charges include two murder counts, so there's precedent, but it's based on dubious grounds.

Still, it's only a charge, and not a conviction, so has yet to be tested in law. Could be an over-zealous prosecutor who has a political agenda, perhaps?

The thing i'll never quite get with the US justice system is that to me it seems someone can just go have a look see if he finds a judge that will let him go to trial with a charge based on some funny interpretation of a law and a jury that will convict on that basis.

The very first line of the cited story mentions an "Ohio fetal homicide law." I suggest you research
THIS PAGE summarizing state feticide laws,
AND THIS ONE on feticide in general, and
THIS ONE on the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004".

That these laws do not contradict Roe or other federal abortion rulings/legislation has been upheld at a number of levels but the USSC has not taken a case that would subject them to their ultimate test. That in itself is an interesting decision. I'm sure they've had the opportunity. You might want to debate what the proper course of action for the USSC would be. You might want to discuss the moral justification of feticide laws. But the nature of the US system of justice isn't really at issue here beyond critiquing the non-action of the USSC and the decisions made by lower courts. Bbauska rightly asks about a double standard. Roe says a fetus is not a person. What's going on?

As I see it, the controversy over feticide and the one over abortion ought to be kept separate. In the case of abortion we have a situation (perhaps only in my eyes) where a woman should be allowed to make certain judgment calls regarding her own reproductive processes. In the case of these state feticide laws we have a situation where the fetus is perhaps being viciously robbed from that mother against her will. I ask you to test your own moral senses as follows: How disgusted are you by the vision of a woman taking an RU486 pill a day, week or month after having intercourse leading to pregnancy? How disgusted are you by the vision of a goon punching an obviously pregnant woman in the belly? I'm more disgusted by the second scene and I bet even the most ardent pro-lifers are too. In point of fact, while abortion has been a moral gray area through most of human history, there's always and as far as I know everywhere been a special repugnance regarding violence done to unborn children - at least when they're old enough for the pregnancy to be visually obvious. That special repugnance goes hand-in-hand with the way such violence has sometimes been made the special focus of "storm trooper" type soldiers who wish to terrorize, subjugate or eliminate a population. Feticide has gone hand-in-hand with genocide in many instances.

Though I'm pro-choice this traditionally special repugnance leads me to be a bit sympathetic to feticide laws. Unfortunately, I suspect that in many cases they've been passed only to advance a pro-life agenda. But I ask all of you who share my pro-choice outlook: for what should a man who, wishing to punish a pregnant woman (or perhaps the father of the fetus), commits an act of violence intended to end the "life" of the fetus without endangering the life of the mother, be charged? Just assault? Does it not strike you as a more serious crime than simply punching the woman?

Do not let your justifiable pro-choice position lead you into a position on feticide you cannot justify.

You're right of course, it is a grey area. I suspect that Brad only raised this in the first place though because he regards the existence of these laws as being a slamdunk argument against the pro-choice position.

No, I stated it to show the hypocrisy in the government's position. Why are some babies, er, fetuses protected via the law, and some are not?

bbauska wrote:No, I stated it to show the hypocrisy in the government's position. Why are some babies, er, fetuses protected via the law, and some are not?

Because it is based on the Mens Rea of the actor. A woman has control over her own body and can decide whether she wishes to be pregnant or not.

In the case of a feticide, the third party has the mens rea to take a life. He is taking a clear and specific action that is intending to end the life of a fetus that he has no rights over.

So if you WANT to end the pregnancy via abortion, then it's ok
If someone else does so against your will, then it's murder.

When did murder become something based on feeling?

GMTom wrote:When did murder become something based on feeling?

Murder is defined by 'feeling', or 'intent' as it's known

OK, so you INTEND to kill a fetus via abortion, then it's murder?
so why is abortion legal if the intent to kill is there?

Archduke,
So if an assailant does not know the victim is pregnant there cannot be a murder charge? Would it just be manslaughter or reckless endangerment then?

Mens Rea (guilty mind) is only half the explanation. Why should a pregnant woman not have mens rea? Anyone looking for clean, crisp answers here is out of luck unless you choose to apply nothing but the most simplistic religious doctrines. Any look at history, psychology or biology is going to be a venture into muddy waters.

First, let's look at the crime of reckless endangerment: it doesn't apply to what I do to myself. As a snow skier I recklessly endangered myself a hundred times a day. It's allowed. If I had placed someone else at the same risk against their will I'd have been guilty. Part of the answer about abortion vs. feticide is the half-true statement that the fetus is the mother in the eyes of the law just as my leg was me when I risked breaking it while skiing. The woman choosing an abortion is - in her mind - dealing with her own unitary biology. The attacker who, with intent, tries to end the viability of as fetus against the mother's will, however, is treating the fetus as a separate being. (This assumes feticide requires intent and mens rea, which ought to be the case.)

Now that's a very unsatisfying answer for a couple of reasons. There's no single good and complete answer.

Another half-true explanation is to say that the fetus enjoys identical status as a person in both cases, but that in the case of abortion the personhood of the fetus -- the rights and protections that attend personhood -- is trumped by the special privileges enjoyed by a woman in the process of reproducing. She's allowed to end the life of the fetus despite the fetus's being a person. The guilt in her mind is, in this special circumstance, something reserved for individual conscience and outside the purview of criminal law. But an outsider has no such privileges (unless a licensed medical pro and the woman is unconscious and the pregnancy is an immediate threat to her life etc.). Why should this be so? Answering that would require an essay. Answer it for yourself, and if you have no answers you're probably "pro-life". If that's the case, I ask only that you recognize that other people do have answers with which they're at least half-satisfied.

Finally, one could argue that the fetus is not a person (at least in the first two trimesters) but that the special circumstance means we should treat it as if it were one in the case of intentional third-party feticide. While not a person, the fetus is clearly a potential person, and violently ending the potential is, in the eyes of the law, equivalent to ending life itself. To the mother, the potential is only potential. She is the life and the fetus is basically the same as an egg. But to the state that egg-like mass, at least at the point it becomes viable outside the womb, has person-like value. See the state laws and note how in many cases the fetus must be "quick" or viable for the law to apply.

Paradox? Ambiguity? A lack of consistency? Yes. Absurdity? Irrationality? Senselessness? No. This is one of the few situations where that can be true. Enjoy the experience.

PS: If the criminal did not know the woman was pregnant, typically the crime is not relevant - see those state laws.

PPS: Bbauska stated that he intended "to show the hypocrisy in the government's position." There's no such thing as "the government's position". That apostrophe needs to be after the pluralizing "s" because we're talking about fifty different governments (except in the minority of cases where the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 applies).

Grammatically correct. Thank you, MX.