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Mississippi Could Soon Jail Women for Stillbirths, Miscarriages

slimvictor said:
By not choosing to abort, and choosing to continue her addiction, she did something that I find reprehensible. I would not charge her with murder or manslaughter, as I said earlier, but something like negligence.
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Essentially, you are saying that, for unborn humans, involuntary manslaughter is worse than homicide. Clearly, when discussing birthed humans, homicide is considered to be the more serious criminal act. How can you just arbitrarily reverse this for unborn humans?
 
S.J.B. said:
Essentially, you are saying that, for unborn humans, involuntary manslaughter is worse than homicide. Clearly, when discussing birthed humans, homicide is considered to be the more serious criminal act. How can you just arbitrarily reverse this for unborn humans?
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Choosing to abort a fetus is a terrible thing. I find it incredibly sad. However, I find the potential choices - including allowing the fetus to be born and live a life without being wanted, and to wreck at least the mother's life in the process - to be roughly equally sad. Whether abortion is "murder" is a very difficult question, but it is this difficulty which makes me believe that it should be legal (with several other thoughts factoring in). To have the government make the final determination for such a sticky question is simply wrong.

However, once the reasonable (safe and most humane) period has passed, it becomes more clear that killing a fetus is not right. Once the baby is born, certainly, but a few minutes beforehand as well, it seems to me to be a cruel act. A day before birth is essentially equally cruel. Once a woman has accepted responsibility for the pregnancy and the life of the unborn, she must not squander its life.

In essence, there are two reasons why, when you say
Using drugs to kill your baby IS abortion.
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, you are missing the point, at least in my mind.

a) The timing of the event.
b) The responsibility of the pregnant woman.

Past a certain point - which I would rather refrain from determining too concretely, but let's say for argument's sake either the first or second trimester - it becomes the woman's job to protect the fetus. Except for e.g. health reasons, I would prefer to make late-term abortions illegal, or impossible. A pregnant woman has (e.g.) 3 months to make up her mind, and once she decides not to abort the fetus, it becomes her job to raise it to adulthood. Even if she really wants to smoke some more crack.
 
slimvictor said:
Choosing to abort a fetus is a terrible thing. I find it incredibly sad. However, I find the potential choices - including allowing the fetus to be born and live a life without being wanted, and to wreck at least the mother's life in the process - to be roughly equally sad. Whether abortion is "murder" is a very difficult question, but it is this difficulty which makes me believe that it should be legal (with several other thoughts factoring in). To have the government make the final determination for such a sticky question is simply wrong.

However, once the reasonable (safe and most humane) period has passed, it becomes more clear that killing a fetus is not right. Once the baby is born, certainly, but a few minutes beforehand as well, it seems to me to be a cruel act. A day before birth is essentially equally cruel. Once a woman has accepted responsibility for the pregnancy and the life of the unborn, she must not squander its life.

In essence, there are two reasons why, when you say , you are missing the point, at least in my mind.

a) The timing of the event.
b) The responsibility of the pregnant woman.

Past a certain point - which I would rather refrain from determining too concretely, but let's say for argument's sake either the first or second trimester - it becomes the woman's job to protect the fetus. Except for e.g. health reasons, I would prefer to make late-term abortions illegal, or impossible. A pregnant woman has (e.g.) 3 months to make up her mind, and once she decides not to abort the fetus, it becomes her job to raise it to adulthood. Even if she really wants to smoke some more crack.
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I have no qualms with the idea of an arbitrary point where it is no longer acceptable to kill an unborn human (three months, six months, whatever). What I find ridiculous is the idea that someone who kills their unborn child unintentionally should be punished, while someone who kills their unborn child intentionally should not be. Once again, I'll propose a theoretical legal scenario: a mother accidentally kills her foetus due to drug use, and must claim that she used the drug to intentionally kill the foetus in order to avoid being prosecuted. This is analogous to a situation where a man accidentally runs over another man with a car, and claims that he did it on purpose to avoid being punished. It is absurd!

On another note: there is no actual evidence that prenatal crack or meth use can seriously harm a baby, so this whole thing is a big charade based on misinformation.
 
if she had taken an actual abortifacient she'd be in less trouble. IANAL but as I understand it, abortion is a constitutionally protected right because of Roe v Wade.
 
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