Are you a murderer? Or just not ready to be a mother?

[actresluv77]

Something just popped into my head and I fet led to write about it. I went to March for Life in DC this week as a chaperone for my church's youth group. I have been having some considerable internal conflict about how I feel about the abortion issue lately. About whether it really is murder or not.

So, today, I am here working at the court house

Comments

[narwhale]

The proponents of fetus-murder laws and pro-choice laws are two entirely different groups. And yeah, as it currently stands, the law is not consistent. But that doesn't reflect inconsistency in the beliefs of individuals, just the results of a democratic system.

Anti-abortion lobbyists are almost always the ones trying to get statutes passed that criminalize fetus deaths. They're trying to take a "slippery slope" approach-- e.g., people realize it's considered murder to kill an unborn baby, and then start wondering why the heck it's legal for that same thing to be killed by the mother in a medical procedure, and then, slowly, expand to try and outlaw more and more acts that result in a fetus dying.

I'm all in favor of getting the laws consistent with one another. Peterson, for all the slimeball that he was, should've only been charged with one murder. I'd be totally okay with a separate statute that criminalized the willful killing of a fetus not in your own body, but it shouldn't be a murder charge.

[djstatick]

I think it has to do with the woman ending a pregnancy versus someone else ending it. Like, in Baltimore, there was a case of a man who beat his pregnant girlfriend and she lost the baby, and he was charged with manslaughter. However, if a pregnant woman uses drugs and then miscarries, it's not a legal issue. The law is quite inconsistent. I do think that the big difference is the choice vs. force aspect.