Skeptic Ginger
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Think the antiabortion laws have gone too far? They have.
- Thread starter Skeptic Ginger
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The Great Zaganza
Maledictorian
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When you have to worry that women might use guns as the means of abortion, lawmakers should reconsider their approach to the subject.
Have you... read the article?
The mother, the one charged, didn't kill the fetus via accident or violence.
The person who shot the pregnant woman was not charged.
The woman who was shot and miscarried was charged.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
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Suppose you and a friend decide to hold up a liquor store. The owner is armed, and shoots and kills your friend in self defense. You are on the hook for murder, not the owner.
Seems like the same deal here.
"Getting shot while in a fight" is not the same thing, in any way, as your liquor store hypothetical.
But yeah I can't believe I have to do this again: *Pulls out the "Holy Crap There's Actually People Defending This" Book, makes a check mark, puts the book away*
But yeah I can't believe I have to do this again: *Pulls out the "Holy Crap There's Actually People Defending This" Book, makes a check mark, puts the book away*
The Greater Fool
Illuminator
Forget it, Jake, it's Alabama.
The Great Zaganza
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The charge is based on a case where a women did exactly that.
"Based on a case"... what?
Someone else shot this woman and killed the fetus. What are you on about?
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
I'm surprised they didn't also charge her with theft for taking the other woman's bullet.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Our collective sense of when a fetus starts to get so human that you can't dispose of it without considering its human rights? That matters a lot in cases like this.
Great. What the hell does that have to do with charging a woman because SOMEONE ELSE shot her and killed her fetus?
The Great Zaganza
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But authorities consider her at fault for the shooting happening in the first place. Ziggurat probably has it right.
I know it is messed up, but there have been a number of cases of pregnant women attempting suicide who have been charged with (attempted) murder of their fetus.
Because desperate women can think clearly about legal consequences.
Butter!
Rough Around the Edges
I'm with Joe. This is absolutely insane.
These lawmakers think of us as mere quasi-sentient incubators, and it's just a plain obvious fact. We're supposed to exhibit just enough sentience to protect a fetus at all costs, but absolutely nothing else. You want to get into an argument with another woman, well, you're the guardian of this fetus now. You should have known it could escalate into violence. You didn't protect your sacred artifact, and now the state is coming down on you. You should do nothing but sit around eating healthy and cooing with joy at your growing belly for at least the 2nd and 3rd trimester. God, it's disgusting.
These lawmakers think of us as mere quasi-sentient incubators, and it's just a plain obvious fact. We're supposed to exhibit just enough sentience to protect a fetus at all costs, but absolutely nothing else. You want to get into an argument with another woman, well, you're the guardian of this fetus now. You should have known it could escalate into violence. You didn't protect your sacred artifact, and now the state is coming down on you. You should do nothing but sit around eating healthy and cooing with joy at your growing belly for at least the 2nd and 3rd trimester. God, it's disgusting.
Segnosaur
Penultimate Amazing
True, the mother didn't kill the fetus herself.
But, according to the article, she started the fight, and attempted to continue it when the other woman did not. I wasn't there, but perhaps it was felt that the shooter was engaged in a certain amount of self-defense.
And there is the concept of 'felony crimes', where all participants in a crime get convicted regardless of their role. (For example, the getaway driver in a bank robbery gets charged for felony murder or any killings committed by the robbers in the bank, even if they stayed in the car and didn't actually go into the bank.) In this case, the pregnant woman starting the fight was considered a crime, and she was responsible for all outcomes due to her participation.
In any case, I think casebro was right... I'm not sure if this case really has much to do with anti-abortion laws, as it does the general application of certain legal concepts.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that the shooter was charged, but the charges were dropped after investigating the incident. (I could be wrong about that...)
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Apparently this is not true.
The article omits any details that would help us assess this point.
However, our law - and I think our morality - provides that people who fight back against an aggressor may not be guilty of any crime. Not even the crime of murder, if their fighting back results in the death of the aggressor.
Perhaps that's what happened in this case. The article doesn't say, so appealing to "read the article" probably doesn't help your argument.
The article doesn't say, but it seems like this might be an application of the principle of felony murder. Our laws provide for charging an aggressor for harm arising from their aggression, even if the agent of that harm was someone else. A security guard shoots a bank robber in self defense, putting a murder charge on the robber's partner.
So charging the woman with an illegally-induced miscarriage, for a miscarriage that resulted from violence that she herself initiated, doesn't seem out of line to me. Not in principle, at least. The article doesn't provide enough detail to know whether that's a reasonable result in this case.
Because the article lacks detail, we should probably reserve judgement. But in the meantime we can reason from certain principles. For example, if you don't agree with the principle of felony murder, then this case will probably never be acceptable to you. Whatever the details that emerge, putting the mom on the hook for the miscarriage resulting from her violence will never seem to you a good moral outcome.
On the other hand, if you do agree with the principle of felony murder, then you're probably at least open to the idea of felony miscarriage as being governed by the same principle. And then you can examine the details of this case, and judge whether the charges against the woman are consistent with this principle.
Unfortunately, we have no details, and so it's premature to pass judgement on the charges.
You can also reason from the principle of illegally-induced miscarriages. If you don't agree that people should be generally prohibited from inducing miscarriages on their own authority, then you will never agree that this woman may have a case to answer, whether she induced the miscarriage during the commission of a felony, or by any other means.
On the other hand, if you agree that in some cases people should be prohibited from inducing miscarriages on their own say-so, then you're probably open to the idea that this woman may have a case to answer here.
If she had self-induced a miscarriage in the 2nd trimester by other means, would you consider that a crime she should be held accountable for? I ask this independently of what the actual laws about intentional miscarriage are, in Alabama. My question is whether or not you think it *should* be a crime. Put it another way: If the question came up for a vote in your jurisdiction, would you vote for or against criminalizing intentional miscarriages?
These questions of principles and how we might apply them are about all we can reasonably discuss right now, since we don't have enough detail to really get into the specifics of this case. It may be that in a week we'll have information that completely changes our understanding of what happened and why she's been charged. However, in the meantime discussing the principles will probably prepare us better to judge this case as more details emerge.
What do you think?