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Mycroft

High Priest of Ed
Mycroft
Joined
Sep 10, 2003
Messages
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Pregnant Mother Shot Herself in the Stomach, Killing Her Child, Va. Judge Rules Causing Your Own Abortion Is Not a Crime

Oct. 19, 2006 — A Virginia judge has dismissed charges today against a young woman who shot herself in order to kill her unborn child in a case that has angered anti-abortion activists.

Tammy Skinner was a poor, desperate 22-year-old with two young children and another one on the way.

She said her boyfriend wouldn't pay for an abortion, so she carried her pregnancy to term.

Then she did the unthinkable.

Prosecutors say that on the morning she was scheduled to give birth, Skinner drove to an auto dealer's parking lot, took a gun, and shot herself in the belly, killing the fetus in an act of self-abortion. Skinner was charged with carrying out an illegal abortion.
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http://abcnews.go.com/US/LegalCenter/story?id=2585102&page=1

The amazing thing is the judge ruled it wasn't a crime. WTF...?!!
 
CFLarsen said:
What is the crime?
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Well, apparently the judge has ruled that there wasn't one.

The one she was charged with from the article:

In Virginia law, if an abortion is deemed illegal, Statute 18.2-71 — the hotly contested statute involved in this case — makes a criminal out of "any person [to] administer to, or cause … any drug or other thing" with intent to destroy an unborn child.
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(A purely elective third trimester abortion in her jurisdiction is illegal.)

Aaron
 
Surely they could at least charge her with things like:

1) Falsely reporting a crime to the police.
2) Discharging a firearm inside a city.

Perhaps the D.A. doesn't want to?

Aaron

ETA: I agree with the D.A. on the charge she was given. IMHO she violated a plain reading of the law.
 
CFLarsen said:
That's why I am asking Mycroft.
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You think he personally knows more about this than what is in the article?

I thought I was being helpful in answering your question; it wasn't directly addressed to Mycroft, but I'm sorry for interfering.

Aaron
 
I find it odd she wasn't charged with murder. Isn't a fetus 6 months and older considered a person in terms of manslaughter/murder charges? This will get new charges added to it.
 
I'm a bit concerned about this :
If someone else had pulled the trigger, he or she would be criminally accountable. Because it was the pregnant woman herself, no crime was committed, the court ruled.

But the Commonwealth of Virginia filed a direct indictment against Skinner, putting her case back in the courtroom.
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To my naive reading, that's a direct violation of the prohibition on double jeopardy.

Perhaps one of the members of the bar can explain to me why the State of Virginia gets two bites at the cherry?
 
:( Jeeze...

You wonder why she didn't get the abortion right after getting pregnant. Medicaid would have paid for it. I suspect the abusive boyfriend had a lot to do with it - sounds like a grade-A, Olympic-class bastard. And while I don't completely grok (I think that's redundant...?) the abused spouse concept, I have to recognize that it exists, and that women can be driven to acts of desperation by grade-A, Olympic-class bastards.

But it still seems to me to be a crime. I don't follow the defense's strange parsing of the word "any" to mean anyone except the mother. Was that the legislature's intent when they wrote the statute? If so, it seems to me they could have easily written it into the law. I also don't understand how the judge bought the argument. At the same time, I think she was in some kind of diminished mental state; how much that should come into play in deciding any penalty, I don't know.

I do know it's pretty graceless to suggest she should have killed herself instead.
 
drkitten said:
I'm a bit concerned about this :


To my naive reading, that's a direct violation of the prohibition on double jeopardy.

Perhaps one of the members of the bar can explain to me why the State of Virginia gets two bites at the cherry?
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I'm no lawyer, but I believe charges that are dismissed may be refiled without violating double jeopardy.
 
She was at term, going into labor. Why didn't she just give the baby up for adoption? I want to emphasize that I don't say that flippantly, but was this a more appealing outcome?

If money was a problem before, now she faces medical and legal fees.

What an awful situation. I do wonder whether anyone working with this woman through her pregnancy had any insight into the personal/financial struggles she says that she was facing at home.
 
BPSCG said:
I do know it's pretty graceless to suggest she should have killed herself instead.
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She was scheduled to give birth that day. So the only difference between killing her baby this way (illegal abortion?:mad: ) or blowing it away at home (murder) after delivery is a matter of hours. I think giving the baby up and offing herself was a better choice.
 
Tailgater said:
She was scheduled to give birth that day. So the only difference between killing her baby this way (illegal abortion?:mad: ) or blowing it away at home (murder) after delivery is a matter of hours. I think giving the baby up and offing herself was a better choice.
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It may have been a "better" choice, but let's limit our considerations of "good" outcomes to those that don't include suicide.
 
Tailgater said:
She was scheduled to give birth that day. So the only difference between killing her baby this way (illegal abortion?:mad: ) or blowing it away at home (murder) after delivery is a matter of hours. I think giving the baby up and offing herself was a better choice.
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False diachotomy.

Definately the desirable outcome would have been:
1) Deliver the baby.
2) Give up the baby for adoption (and potentially recapture medical bills from adoptive parents as is permitted by law).
3) Stay alive.

There was just no need for either of them to die.

Aaron
 
Tailgater said:
She was scheduled to give birth that day. So the only difference between killing her baby this way (illegal abortion?:mad: ) or blowing it away at home (murder) after delivery is a matter of hours. I think giving the baby up and offing herself was a better choice.
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Yup.

This baby was old enough to survive on the outside. I have a hard time understanding why this is not murder.
 
I'm telling you guys. She was charged with the wrong statute, and there will be murder charges or something of the sort added on.
 
Katana said:
Yup.

This baby was old enough to survive on the outside. I have a hard time understanding why this is not murder.
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Yeah, I agree. I'm pro-abortion so long as we are talking about something that is not capable of thought or feelings. I'm pro-abortion in the third trimester if the situation warrants it say for extreme medical problems. Otherwise a baby in the womb is no different than one outside. Which is fine if you think killing babies is ok and some on this forum do.
 
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