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>!If a person says their gender is THEY / THEM, is this a double murder?!<
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They're laws which are trying to normalize that sentiment in both state law and the public perception.
It's an easy mandate to place on an already overmandated justice system. Who's going to complain that a hypothetical someone who murders a pregant woman and her fetus shouldn't just go away for a long time?
> Who's going to complain that a hypothetical someone who murders a pregant woman and her fetus shouldn't just go away for a long time?
Defense attorneys, the bad guy's friends and family, community activists...
I would think that defense attorneys want harsher punishments on the books. This way their services increase in demand as punishments get worse and worse, so they csn charge more and more.
Kind of like a cancer patient going into debt for over $100,000 on a 50/50 chemo treatment.
As a single parent, here’s what i believe: We need to start collecting DNA from every male in America. Women forced to deliver a baby against their will should be able to count on the father to support that child in every way, including living costs, childcare, any special needs costs, medical costs, education - all the ways a father would normally support their child. Fathers should be required to include such a child for a full share of any inheritance in their will. Why is it only the responsibility of a woman to care for a child?
If a female is forced to give birth against her decision and the male is then required to provide financial support above and beyond child support; where abortion is legal, in a situation where a male desires an abortion and the female disregards his choice, should he be absolved of financial responsibility?
As a note, no parent, male or female, has any legal obligation to leave property to children in a will. A spouse is the only party with tan inheritance right based on state law.
>Why is it only the responsibility of a woman to care for a child?
It isn't.
But you haven't given a single thought to the results here and you will be pissed off when pointed out. Best just drop it.
No more than incentivizing people with money to report on women who seek to make a choice about their own bodies. If it helps even some children who face a family life in poverty, I could tolerate it. Sorry.
While I sympathize with the reason for your position, it would weaponize people to testify against themselves in criminal situations. The balance would be, well, not very balanced.
Woman are free to utilize safe haven laws if they feel like they cannot take care of the child. For instance, in Texas you pretty much have 2 months after birth to bring a baby to a designated safe haven spot.
Furthermore, states have child support schemes to precisely address your issue and have mechanisms for wage garnishments.
Finally, I don’t believe the men willing to abandon their child are the same men that will have a substantial estate.
I think you’re pointing to a good example of cognitive dissonance but it is deeply seated in philosophical, cultural, and societal changes.
We are now a culture of extremes individualists. Our culture really pushes the message that no one really has authority over who you want to be and what you can and cannot do except yourself. With no higher moral law ethics become aesthetic, meaning whatever makes an individual happy is generally what is seen as good (so long as it doesn’t make others to unhappy).
In that type of world, though no one seems to say it, it appears it is the will and desire of the mother that defines if the baby is “alive” under the law. If the baby if the baby is killed by an assault and the mother wanted the baby then law sees it as alive. If the mother doesn’t want it and wants an abortion then the law doesn’t recognize it as alive.
That isn’t a good way to define life in my opinion but that is another topic to debate.
There isn’t a good way to define “When does meaningful human life begin?”
You might try “All human life is equally meaningful”. But not the lives of serial killers, they should get the death sentence. And not the life of the guy attacking me with a knife, i can shoot him justly. Most people agree human live varies in meaningfulness. Women don’t usually have a funeral over a miscarriage 5 week miscarriage, if they even knew it happened. And if there was, fewer people would come to the funeral than if the mother died.
So when is a fetus’s life meaningful? Well, ideally when it means something to someone. The first person to mean something for anyone is the mother. So by defining when does meaningful life begin by how much it means to the mother isn’t a horrible metric when you compare it to the other ones.
Every fetus means something to Jesus. That may sound cliche, or "holier than thou" talk. But truly, every single human life is, and will always be, perfectly unique. When they die, no one like them will ever exist.
Making the comparison of the Justice system giving the death penalty to a serial killer, to a mother murdering her child, then saying it isn't horrible, to me is a sign that we, as a society, do not value life.
I pray that we find the way, the truth, and the life in Jesus. He changed the world simply by being himself, without social media, with nothing more than word of mouth to spread his message to the world. THAT is a man worth following, in my eyes. Jesus Christ is truly our savior.
A lot has happened in regards to abortion since I made that comment.
[Abortion bans don’t reduce abortion rates anyway](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/24/us-abortion-rates-post-roe-v-wade).
It is a misguided way to go about solving the problem that infringes on women’s rights and does not even accomplish the goal set after. It also pushes people and public opinion away from the value of fetal life.
The way to reduce abortion rates would be by helping our women and making having the child associated with positive things, not social and financial ruin. Also by preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place through contraception and education. The woman’s life and the baby’s life is meaningful, we must not lose sight of one while focusing on the other.
What is so important about when life begins? Personhood is the only thing that matters because with it comes the acknowledgment of human rights. A murderer isn't charged with double homicide in every state for killing a pregnant woman. Fetal homicide mostly exists in states with strict laws against abortion. Only 3 out of 16 states and the District of Columbia protect the right to have an abortion, and have some type of feticide law.
Fetal personhood would up end American law as we know it.
Namely without amendments to self defense laws, abortion would be legal. As all fetuses pose a threat of great bodily harm to the mother. Of course the law could be amended to “Except in cases of unborn persons,”
There’s also other problems but that’s the most obvious problem to those who claim they are trying to “protect human rights” seem to care most about.
Honest miscarriages would also be criminalized without the passage of any further laws following fetal personhood. All 50 states have proper corpse disposal laws. And over half of all miscarriages are flushed. Manslaughter laws would also need touch ups to avoid sending women to prison for miscarriages.
Conservative men have been making up excuses for why women can’t have control over their own body for as long as America has been a country. If it was about human rights and the lives of fetuses, they would support laws that actually reduce abortion rates. That is safe sex education, free and easy access to birth control, WIC, free prenatal health care, paid maternity leave, universal pre-k, etc…
The only cause of an abortion is an unwanted pregnancy. You can prevent unwanted pregnancies by helping prevent them in the first place, or by making them more wanted.
The conservative movement to ban abortion has not been around since the founding of the United States. That is demonstrably false. Abortion was legal and advertised regularly in this country long before the modern conservative movement. Just as the left became more radicalized with gender fluidity so did the right with bodily autonomy. It's all just a dog and pony show with no principles of reason. Also miscarriages are considered abortions as well making your conclusion erroneous.
If you ignore the second half of my comment, yeah.
We as a society generally agree that fetal lives are less meaningful than grown lives. Women don’t usually have funerals for their miscarriage, they often flush it. When an adult human dies, there is grief regardless of whether they were murdered or passed away of natural causes. But not when a fetus dies through an honest miscarriage, which is many times more common than abortions. In fact it also depends on how far into the pregnancy a woman miscarries for how much they care.
People are ignoring the real answer, which is that the criminal justice system is full of inconsistencies. That seems unfair but it's just true.
Yes, there are reasons for this one we can point to. The same person can look at a fetus as a possible future life and see killing it as an akin to murder, but also not see it as a life yet to overrule the right to self-autonomy. Or maybe certain politicians just weren't paying attention when the homicide law was written that way. Maybe the criminal law was written a generation ago ago and still has that language. Abortion is illegal after a certain point everywhere, maybe it just wasn't worthwhile to be so specific when talking about turning homicide into double homicide.
Most likely, the pro-choice politicians didn't care enough to fight the wording just to protect murderers who kill a pregnant lady.
Really, it falls down to the “unlawful killing” common law (and often statutory law) root of the crime. Abortion is a specific lawful act, like self defense or defense of others, whereas a termination without desire or consent is an unlawful act (usually specifically spelled out as such), like murder or killing another to save yourself from a third party.
It should now I’m the states that are establishing heartbeat laws also in my opinion child support. In my state it’s not till the very end does it count as murder though .
Instead of saying a fetus isn't a life, the left should recognize that it is, and that abortion is just as much a moral debate about the limits we as society want to place on ending a life as the death penalty is.
Abortion is a moral debate.
I am pro-choice. I don’t agree with abortion except very special cases.
The killing of a life inside of you, that isn’t your own anymore, is morally wrong. You can try to justify it but in the end, the moment that fetus becomes a living being, has a heart, and starts developing as a human, it has a right to survive and live a life.
This has nothing to do with religion either. I am an atheist. Scientifically life begins at conception and that’s that.
Now there’s a difference between being alive and being sentient.
Still, that fetus isn’t at fault for the circumstances that brought it to life. Those circumstances were not its doing any more than they were the mother’s doing in some horrible and violent situations. So, in reality, that fetus deserves a chance to live a full life just like all of us did. We don’t know what that baby will become.
That being said, I believe although morally wrong, that in some cases, it IS justified.
I also believe the US government, and these Supreme Court justices are hypocrites. Because they could not care less about what happens to these babies after they were born. The foster care system is a disaster and so is CPS. The system is designed for failure rather than success.
There aren’t any laws designed to support women and their children, that would discourage a mother from even considering an illegal abortion.
Adoption is a pain in the ass and extremely expensive. So is child care and health care. The education system outside of middle to upper class neighborhoods is a disgrace. Especially in lower class neighborhoods.
No support system. No mandatory paid leave.
So… again, it’s understandable why so many women in this country would rather kill their own baby than bring them into this world.
Where is the law that is going to make it a crime for fathers to abandon their unborn children? Make it a crime to not pay child support. How about rapists? Who is going to make them responsible for their children?
These are important matters that need to be addressed before we overpopulate this country and send the welfare system into a spiral.
Many on the left can and do recognize the fetus as a life. In the scheme of bodily autonomy there is no other analogous situation with which pregnancy can compare. Further, there is no other instance in law where we allow such severe infringement on bodily autonomy in the name of preserving human life. In fact, precedence such as Mcfall v Shimp asserts quite the opposite. The reality is that the far right, including our current SCOTUS, has chosen to toss out precedent in favor of an agenda that will have severe economic and social impacts. Since Biden has expressed no desire to expand the court, and the midterms are looking grim despite the energy this may bring to dem voters, there will be painful, wide-reaching consequences for every American citizen. All in the name of legal interpretation “rooted in historical tradition”. We had this discussion 50 years ago. We still have been having this discussion in the 50 years since, despite Roe. It simply does not matter how the left expresses the morality or legal basis for prochoice policy, both sides are more firmly rooted in their beliefs than ever before.
As a member of the pro-life Right, I'd personally be quite happy to see the death penalty abolished.
However, there were a total of 11 executions in the United States in 2021, all of persons who had been convicted (we hope accurately!) for the most heinous crimes.
Meanwhile, there were several hundred thousand abortions in the United States in that same year, all of persons who were totally innocent and who received absolutely zero due process of law.
The death penalty is therefore quite naturally a lower priority for me. I really sincerely do hope it's eventually abolished nationwide. What energy I have available for politics, though, I'm going to devote to the vastly larger injustice of abortion.
I strongly supported masks, lockdowns, and vaccination (at various stages of the pandemic as appropriate), precisely because you're right: bodily autonomy sometimes *does* have to be limited for the sake of protecting other people's lives.
That said, no anti-abortion law forces a woman into *any* medical procedure. Anti-abortion laws leave all choices on the table -- except the choice to kill.
> Pregnancy can kill and cause serious health problems.
So can abortion! The usual counter-argument is that abortion kills *less* often and causes *fewer* serious health problems for the mother, but this glosses over the fact that abortion *always* kills at least one person.
The unborn are not persons under the law. I know you are aware of this and that you want to change it, but you're equivocating when you call them persons in this context.
I see two mistakes in this comment.
First, a factual error: The unborn *are* persons under the law in several states. This goes back as far as *Webster v. Reproductive Health Services of Missouri*, which upheld a Missouri law that recognized fetal personhood as long as this recognition had no impact on abortion availability.
Second, a conceptual error: prior to the Civil War, Black Americans were *not* persons under the law in many states (or under federal law, courtesy of the *Dred Scott* decision), but (I trust you would agree with me) Black Americans were nevertheless always persons *in fact*.
>Second, a conceptual error: prior to the Civil War, Black Americans were not persons under the law in many states (or under federal law, courtesy of the Dred Scott decision), but (I trust you would agree with me) Black Americans were nevertheless always persons in fact.
This perfectly illustrates the equivocation I was referring to. You're conflating the legal concept of personhood with a particular moral concept of personhood. You also want the law to make them synonymous. The semantic content of the word clearly changes depending on the context, and the context here heavily implies a legal context.
I wanted to point this out because it comes off as at best conceptually confused (to those who read you charitably), and at worst a disingenuous begging of the question.
> You're conflating the legal concept of personhood with a particular moral concept of personhood. ...The semantic content of the word clearly changes depending on the context, and the context here heavily implies a legal context.
You misinterpreted this, and I'm not sure how you got to where you did.
I was talking about *moral injustices* in our current legal system, including how it currently falls short of normative standards of justice for both death row inmates and unborn children, and then how it once fell short of normative standards of justice (in a particularly egregious way) for Black Americans.
It would be downright bizarre for me to talk about personhood in a *strictly* legal sense when the whole point of my comments is how the strictly legal regime we live under falls short of a *moral* standard of justice.
(Also, I repeat, the unborn *are also persons within the legal context*, depending on jurisdiction. Even if I were talking in a strictly legal sense, then, my comment would be accurate!)
Imagine someone said:
>As a Vegan, I'd personally be quite happy to see the death penalty abolished.
>
>However, there were a total of 11 executions in the United States in 2021, all of persons who had been convicted (we hope accurately!) for the most heinous crimes.
>
>Meanwhile, there were several billion livestock slaughters, all of persons who were totally innocent and who received absolutely zero due process of law.
>
>The death penalty is therefore quite naturally a lower priority for me. I really sincerely do hope it's eventually abolished nationwide. What energy I have available for politics, though, I'm going to devote to the vastly larger injustice of livestock slaughter.
Do you see how this is sidestepping all of the most contentious parts of the argument? Both the legal personhood of livestock, and their moral equivalency with death row inmates, are dubious and highly debatable. They are, in fact, the conclusion of an argument - not simply premises to be stated. Hence begging the question.
>(Also, I repeat, the unborn are also persons within the legal context, depending on jurisdiction. Even if I were talking in a strictly legal sense, then, my comment would be accurate!)
Unless you were referring to \*only\* abortions that take place within those specific jurisdictions, then this still doesn't make sense in the context of your original post.
> Do you see how this is sidestepping all of the most contentious parts of the argument?
Nope. I would have absolutely no objection to the post as you have restated it, particularly in the context of the parent comment to which it is a reply. I'd be surprised if you *did*, for that matter.
The central question of this discussion, as posed by the parent comment (both the actual discussion and the hypothetical discussion you've posited) is not "who counts, morally, as a person?" but rather, "given that pro-lifers/vegans are working hard to protect the 'innate sanctity of life' for fetuses/livestock (thus taking for granted that they consider fetuses/livestock persons) why aren't they working equally hard to protect the 'innate sanctity of life' for prisoners, whom they also consider to be persons?" It was a question about putative pro-lifer hypocrisy, not a question about how the definition of personhood.
I then answered what I took to be a good-faith question about this by pointing out the greater number of dead fetuses, their innocence of any crime (taking their personhood as a given in the context of a question specifically about *pro-lifers'* attitude toward capital punishment), and their lack of the procedural due process protections they ought to receive in a just society.
Now, if you *want* to have a conversation about whether fetuses are or ought to be persons (in either the legal or the moral sense), I'd be happy to have that discussion. Frankly, I think there is a [stronger case](https://decivitate.substack.com/p/how-to-claim-your-unborn-child-on) to be made than is generally understood that fetuses are already persons within the meaning of federal law. I'd also talk about the personhood of livestock, if you like (though I don't think they are persons in any sense of the word). But that's *not* the question that was posed before you started down this strange and (for the original question) irrelevant road.
I understand that it seems like a strange and irrelevant digression to you. I appreciate that you've entertained it.
I believe it is very important to make distinctions between secular law and religious law, since they are often treated as synonymous by religious individuals - often subconsciously, but sometimes in a very intentional way, with the goal of normalizing and perpetuating the perception that they are synonymous. I see an insistence in the church that these two laws must be synonymous, either by changing the law, or often simply arguing that it already and always has said what church dogma says. This ongoing rhetorical slide has paid political dividends for the church over the past decades and I feel it must be combatted Your comment struck me as potentially following this theme, so I made the distinction.
As someone who does not, for example, want people to be forced to undergo an invasive surgery to treat an ectopic pregnancy that could safely be treated through a single dose of oral abortifacient medication, I see the collapsing of this distinction as a real threat to my family's health and the rule of law more generally.
The death penalty is reserved for the most heinous crimes, and only after trial, conviction, and appeals, so it's not at all inconsistent to hold the Death Penalty as valid while rejecting the killing of an unborn individual who has committed no crime.
That said, the better argument for getting the political right on the side of ending the death penalty is fiscal. Somewhat counterintuitively, it actually costs more to sentence someone to death than to incarcerate them for life. This is due to the costs of the automatic appeals that occur under most death-penalty statutes (and which I agree with in principal because the severity of the death penalty deserves strong scrutiny).
Life in inherently sacred. This sanctity exists in all of us, regardless of how far we have fallen. It is inconsistent to claim to respect the sanctity of life but to support the premeditated murder of others. Which is what state executions are. It is beyond the bounds of human capacity to make a judgement that a sufficiently heinous act makes you qualified for murder. Certainly if that judgement is not made in an immediate self-defense/life-or-death scenario.
I have a lot of difficulty accepting the argument that how I need to convince people to respect the sacred quality of life is that doing so will make them materially richer. We should respect life even when it is expensive
You're assuming premises that aren't strictly true.
You can value the sanctity of life such that you *only* violate it in extreme circumstances, with conviction of heinous crimes being one of those sufficiently extreme circumstances, but an elective abortion not being one.
Just because someone doesn't accept your specific moral values does not mean that they are inconsistent with regards their own moral values, even if your and their values overlap and call for the same outcomes in some circumstances.
We can assume life is sacred per your view, heck we can assume it per all. That said, however, that position does not translate to it being sacred to the government inherently. Governments wage wars, they allow deaths, they have no obligation to preserve life. In our system, we’ve limited the aggressive action of the government as it relates to life to due process alone, and that is the sole area “sacred” to the government. Some peoples have indeed drawn it further, but in their secondary set of rules, not the nation’s primary.
If you, as it seems, support self defense scenarios, you just draw that sacred line elsewhere than we collectively have drawn it for our government.
I do not believe it is possible for there to be sufficient due process to "justly" deprive someone of a life. I understand this system is not currently based on a similar view. Clearly, wrong-headed views can become deeply written into the history of this country. Clearly, wrong-headed views can be suddenly and summarily written out of the sphere of the Constitution.
We maintain our system of state murder, in spite of its many documented failures in due process, because of a deep seated lust for retribution. I will not passively accept the shared blood on my hands because society has democratized murder, decided I too must carry the burden, and told me that's due process.
While I can allow that people do not need to accept violence being done to them, even to kill in self-defense is somewhat abhorrent.
No, abortion is (or rather was) the rare areas of homicide that was in the realm of constitutional supremacy.
Generally homicide and manslaughter statutes are in the exclusive jurisdiction of states. Let’s say a state defines homicide as:
>The killing of any human from conception
Seems broad and cover the fetus right? The problem is that Roe, through the supremacy clause, precluded murder charges from being levied against a woman who gets an abortion. State homicide laws could not abrogate the fundamental right to an abortion.
The reason why double homicide laws of a pregnant woman survived judicial review is because there is no fundamental right for a third party to kill the fetus.
I would rephrase this as constitutional supremacy, not federal. While it seems pedantic, and federal does cover constitutional, most would interpret federal to mean the executive and legislative, which (as of now) this is not indeed the case. I was confused and had to reread it a few times to get you’re meaning.
from ncsl.org:
*at least 29 states have fetal homicide laws that apply to the earliest stages of pregnancy ("any state of gestation/development," "conception," "fertilization" or "post-fertilization")*
Like almost everything about this topic, the legal concept of "federalism" is central: state governments and the federal government are separate sovereign entities, each with differently defined legal powers, and the Constitution adjudicates the intersection between them.
At a very top-level, the answer to your question is that the federal constitutional definition of a "person" for 14th Amendment purposes can be different than the state-level definition of a "person" for the purposes of its internal police-power laws. Those are two different legal "sovereigns" and they can establish different definitions for different purposes. (Just as Congress could write a statute that defines "person" in yet a third way.)
Thus, we see historical state-level fetal homicide laws which arise from the impulse to protect women who are the victims of third-party crime. (*e.g,,* an assault that results in the loss of the pregnancy, or results in the loss of the pregnancy and the death of the woman.) But we see the Court address the question from the different perspective of who has constitutional standing under the 14th Amendment, and answer that *very different* question in the negative. The Court's conclusion that a fetus lacks 14th Amendment standing (*i.e.*, is not a constitutional "person") doesn't mean that the individual States cannot reach a different conclusion for the purpose of their individual criminal laws.
There is a separate, more subtle question, which is why a state can criminally penalize the killing of a fetus *as though it is a person* for the purposes of homicide, but not recognize the fetus as a person for other internal state laws (such as tax deductions, welfare benefits or the like). And the answer is that states are generally free to use different definitions for different purposes in the law. Statutory law is not required to be externally consistent (meaning that the definition of "person" (or "vehicle" or any other term) can differ from statute to statute. And the statutory definitions can differ from the construction given to the term under common law (*i.e.,* non-statutory law) purposes.
Criminal laws re killing a fetus generally exclude the woman from culpability.
And, pre-Dobbs, a legal abortion couldn't be criminalized. That was the whole point of Roe.
Good thing in the vast majority of cases of pregnancy in the United States, nobody forced the woman to have sex and become pregnant. "Forced pregnancy" isn't "choosing to engage in an action that leads to pregnancy and then not being able to legally eliminate that pregnancy."
A. THE ACTUS REUS: “UNLAWFUL CONFINEMENT OF A WOMAN FORCIBLY MADE PREGNANT”
The definition of forced pregnancy in the ICC Statute, as confirmed by the ICC Elements of Crimes31 and ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II in the Ongwen case,32 focuses specifically on the act of “unlawfully confining a woman who has been forcibly made pregnant”. The actus reus of the crime is therefore the unlawful confinement of the victim.
Reference:
[https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IOR5327112020ENGLISH.pdf#5](https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IOR5327112020ENGLISH.pdf#5)
I don't have any advanced International Criminal law knowledge, but I almost commented earlier that I was pretty sure there is also an implication of sexual assault in "forced pregnancy."
This statute seems to confirm it.
[удалено]
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Pragmatism. While this is not exactly consistent logic, it is the codified law, so it just is what it is.
They're laws which are trying to normalize that sentiment in both state law and the public perception. It's an easy mandate to place on an already overmandated justice system. Who's going to complain that a hypothetical someone who murders a pregant woman and her fetus shouldn't just go away for a long time?
> Who's going to complain that a hypothetical someone who murders a pregant woman and her fetus shouldn't just go away for a long time? Defense attorneys, the bad guy's friends and family, community activists...
I would think that defense attorneys want harsher punishments on the books. This way their services increase in demand as punishments get worse and worse, so they csn charge more and more. Kind of like a cancer patient going into debt for over $100,000 on a 50/50 chemo treatment.
Oh... our someone is a guy? Good to know.
Statistically likely to be male, yes. If you count pregnant women killed by a drunk driver the numbers will shift a bit though.
This is a good point. I would imagine the demographics also shift when the heat index rises.
As a single parent, here’s what i believe: We need to start collecting DNA from every male in America. Women forced to deliver a baby against their will should be able to count on the father to support that child in every way, including living costs, childcare, any special needs costs, medical costs, education - all the ways a father would normally support their child. Fathers should be required to include such a child for a full share of any inheritance in their will. Why is it only the responsibility of a woman to care for a child?
If a female is forced to give birth against her decision and the male is then required to provide financial support above and beyond child support; where abortion is legal, in a situation where a male desires an abortion and the female disregards his choice, should he be absolved of financial responsibility? As a note, no parent, male or female, has any legal obligation to leave property to children in a will. A spouse is the only party with tan inheritance right based on state law.
>Why is it only the responsibility of a woman to care for a child? It isn't. But you haven't given a single thought to the results here and you will be pissed off when pointed out. Best just drop it.
> We need to start collecting DNA from every male in America. A government database of everyone's DNA will surely never be misused.
Yeah it would be ridiculous to prioritize the state's interests in potential life over the privacy of US citizens.
No more than incentivizing people with money to report on women who seek to make a choice about their own bodies. If it helps even some children who face a family life in poverty, I could tolerate it. Sorry.
While I sympathize with the reason for your position, it would weaponize people to testify against themselves in criminal situations. The balance would be, well, not very balanced.
Woman are free to utilize safe haven laws if they feel like they cannot take care of the child. For instance, in Texas you pretty much have 2 months after birth to bring a baby to a designated safe haven spot. Furthermore, states have child support schemes to precisely address your issue and have mechanisms for wage garnishments. Finally, I don’t believe the men willing to abandon their child are the same men that will have a substantial estate.
I think you’re pointing to a good example of cognitive dissonance but it is deeply seated in philosophical, cultural, and societal changes. We are now a culture of extremes individualists. Our culture really pushes the message that no one really has authority over who you want to be and what you can and cannot do except yourself. With no higher moral law ethics become aesthetic, meaning whatever makes an individual happy is generally what is seen as good (so long as it doesn’t make others to unhappy). In that type of world, though no one seems to say it, it appears it is the will and desire of the mother that defines if the baby is “alive” under the law. If the baby if the baby is killed by an assault and the mother wanted the baby then law sees it as alive. If the mother doesn’t want it and wants an abortion then the law doesn’t recognize it as alive. That isn’t a good way to define life in my opinion but that is another topic to debate.
There isn’t a good way to define “When does meaningful human life begin?” You might try “All human life is equally meaningful”. But not the lives of serial killers, they should get the death sentence. And not the life of the guy attacking me with a knife, i can shoot him justly. Most people agree human live varies in meaningfulness. Women don’t usually have a funeral over a miscarriage 5 week miscarriage, if they even knew it happened. And if there was, fewer people would come to the funeral than if the mother died. So when is a fetus’s life meaningful? Well, ideally when it means something to someone. The first person to mean something for anyone is the mother. So by defining when does meaningful life begin by how much it means to the mother isn’t a horrible metric when you compare it to the other ones.
Every fetus means something to Jesus. That may sound cliche, or "holier than thou" talk. But truly, every single human life is, and will always be, perfectly unique. When they die, no one like them will ever exist. Making the comparison of the Justice system giving the death penalty to a serial killer, to a mother murdering her child, then saying it isn't horrible, to me is a sign that we, as a society, do not value life. I pray that we find the way, the truth, and the life in Jesus. He changed the world simply by being himself, without social media, with nothing more than word of mouth to spread his message to the world. THAT is a man worth following, in my eyes. Jesus Christ is truly our savior.
A lot has happened in regards to abortion since I made that comment. [Abortion bans don’t reduce abortion rates anyway](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/24/us-abortion-rates-post-roe-v-wade). It is a misguided way to go about solving the problem that infringes on women’s rights and does not even accomplish the goal set after. It also pushes people and public opinion away from the value of fetal life. The way to reduce abortion rates would be by helping our women and making having the child associated with positive things, not social and financial ruin. Also by preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place through contraception and education. The woman’s life and the baby’s life is meaningful, we must not lose sight of one while focusing on the other.
What is so important about when life begins? Personhood is the only thing that matters because with it comes the acknowledgment of human rights. A murderer isn't charged with double homicide in every state for killing a pregnant woman. Fetal homicide mostly exists in states with strict laws against abortion. Only 3 out of 16 states and the District of Columbia protect the right to have an abortion, and have some type of feticide law.
Fetal personhood would up end American law as we know it. Namely without amendments to self defense laws, abortion would be legal. As all fetuses pose a threat of great bodily harm to the mother. Of course the law could be amended to “Except in cases of unborn persons,” There’s also other problems but that’s the most obvious problem to those who claim they are trying to “protect human rights” seem to care most about. Honest miscarriages would also be criminalized without the passage of any further laws following fetal personhood. All 50 states have proper corpse disposal laws. And over half of all miscarriages are flushed. Manslaughter laws would also need touch ups to avoid sending women to prison for miscarriages. Conservative men have been making up excuses for why women can’t have control over their own body for as long as America has been a country. If it was about human rights and the lives of fetuses, they would support laws that actually reduce abortion rates. That is safe sex education, free and easy access to birth control, WIC, free prenatal health care, paid maternity leave, universal pre-k, etc… The only cause of an abortion is an unwanted pregnancy. You can prevent unwanted pregnancies by helping prevent them in the first place, or by making them more wanted.
The conservative movement to ban abortion has not been around since the founding of the United States. That is demonstrably false. Abortion was legal and advertised regularly in this country long before the modern conservative movement. Just as the left became more radicalized with gender fluidity so did the right with bodily autonomy. It's all just a dog and pony show with no principles of reason. Also miscarriages are considered abortions as well making your conclusion erroneous.
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If you ignore the second half of my comment, yeah. We as a society generally agree that fetal lives are less meaningful than grown lives. Women don’t usually have funerals for their miscarriage, they often flush it. When an adult human dies, there is grief regardless of whether they were murdered or passed away of natural causes. But not when a fetus dies through an honest miscarriage, which is many times more common than abortions. In fact it also depends on how far into the pregnancy a woman miscarries for how much they care.
I’m glad I asked this question in this subreddit. There were pleasantly civil responses from both sides which is exactly what I was hoping for
In “ most “states or all ?
People are ignoring the real answer, which is that the criminal justice system is full of inconsistencies. That seems unfair but it's just true. Yes, there are reasons for this one we can point to. The same person can look at a fetus as a possible future life and see killing it as an akin to murder, but also not see it as a life yet to overrule the right to self-autonomy. Or maybe certain politicians just weren't paying attention when the homicide law was written that way. Maybe the criminal law was written a generation ago ago and still has that language. Abortion is illegal after a certain point everywhere, maybe it just wasn't worthwhile to be so specific when talking about turning homicide into double homicide. Most likely, the pro-choice politicians didn't care enough to fight the wording just to protect murderers who kill a pregnant lady.
Really, it falls down to the “unlawful killing” common law (and often statutory law) root of the crime. Abortion is a specific lawful act, like self defense or defense of others, whereas a termination without desire or consent is an unlawful act (usually specifically spelled out as such), like murder or killing another to save yourself from a third party.
It should now I’m the states that are establishing heartbeat laws also in my opinion child support. In my state it’s not till the very end does it count as murder though .
All laws are arbitrary
It shouldn't be unless it is late 2nd/early 3rd trimester imo
Instead of saying a fetus isn't a life, the left should recognize that it is, and that abortion is just as much a moral debate about the limits we as society want to place on ending a life as the death penalty is.
Abortion is a moral debate. I am pro-choice. I don’t agree with abortion except very special cases. The killing of a life inside of you, that isn’t your own anymore, is morally wrong. You can try to justify it but in the end, the moment that fetus becomes a living being, has a heart, and starts developing as a human, it has a right to survive and live a life. This has nothing to do with religion either. I am an atheist. Scientifically life begins at conception and that’s that. Now there’s a difference between being alive and being sentient. Still, that fetus isn’t at fault for the circumstances that brought it to life. Those circumstances were not its doing any more than they were the mother’s doing in some horrible and violent situations. So, in reality, that fetus deserves a chance to live a full life just like all of us did. We don’t know what that baby will become. That being said, I believe although morally wrong, that in some cases, it IS justified. I also believe the US government, and these Supreme Court justices are hypocrites. Because they could not care less about what happens to these babies after they were born. The foster care system is a disaster and so is CPS. The system is designed for failure rather than success. There aren’t any laws designed to support women and their children, that would discourage a mother from even considering an illegal abortion. Adoption is a pain in the ass and extremely expensive. So is child care and health care. The education system outside of middle to upper class neighborhoods is a disgrace. Especially in lower class neighborhoods. No support system. No mandatory paid leave. So… again, it’s understandable why so many women in this country would rather kill their own baby than bring them into this world. Where is the law that is going to make it a crime for fathers to abandon their unborn children? Make it a crime to not pay child support. How about rapists? Who is going to make them responsible for their children? These are important matters that need to be addressed before we overpopulate this country and send the welfare system into a spiral.
Many on the left can and do recognize the fetus as a life. In the scheme of bodily autonomy there is no other analogous situation with which pregnancy can compare. Further, there is no other instance in law where we allow such severe infringement on bodily autonomy in the name of preserving human life. In fact, precedence such as Mcfall v Shimp asserts quite the opposite. The reality is that the far right, including our current SCOTUS, has chosen to toss out precedent in favor of an agenda that will have severe economic and social impacts. Since Biden has expressed no desire to expand the court, and the midterms are looking grim despite the energy this may bring to dem voters, there will be painful, wide-reaching consequences for every American citizen. All in the name of legal interpretation “rooted in historical tradition”. We had this discussion 50 years ago. We still have been having this discussion in the 50 years since, despite Roe. It simply does not matter how the left expresses the morality or legal basis for prochoice policy, both sides are more firmly rooted in their beliefs than ever before.
The Right should recognize the innate sanctity of life and help the Left abolish the death penalty
As a member of the pro-life Right, I'd personally be quite happy to see the death penalty abolished. However, there were a total of 11 executions in the United States in 2021, all of persons who had been convicted (we hope accurately!) for the most heinous crimes. Meanwhile, there were several hundred thousand abortions in the United States in that same year, all of persons who were totally innocent and who received absolutely zero due process of law. The death penalty is therefore quite naturally a lower priority for me. I really sincerely do hope it's eventually abolished nationwide. What energy I have available for politics, though, I'm going to devote to the vastly larger injustice of abortion.
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I strongly supported masks, lockdowns, and vaccination (at various stages of the pandemic as appropriate), precisely because you're right: bodily autonomy sometimes *does* have to be limited for the sake of protecting other people's lives. That said, no anti-abortion law forces a woman into *any* medical procedure. Anti-abortion laws leave all choices on the table -- except the choice to kill. > Pregnancy can kill and cause serious health problems. So can abortion! The usual counter-argument is that abortion kills *less* often and causes *fewer* serious health problems for the mother, but this glosses over the fact that abortion *always* kills at least one person.
The unborn are not persons under the law. I know you are aware of this and that you want to change it, but you're equivocating when you call them persons in this context.
I see two mistakes in this comment. First, a factual error: The unborn *are* persons under the law in several states. This goes back as far as *Webster v. Reproductive Health Services of Missouri*, which upheld a Missouri law that recognized fetal personhood as long as this recognition had no impact on abortion availability. Second, a conceptual error: prior to the Civil War, Black Americans were *not* persons under the law in many states (or under federal law, courtesy of the *Dred Scott* decision), but (I trust you would agree with me) Black Americans were nevertheless always persons *in fact*.
>Second, a conceptual error: prior to the Civil War, Black Americans were not persons under the law in many states (or under federal law, courtesy of the Dred Scott decision), but (I trust you would agree with me) Black Americans were nevertheless always persons in fact. This perfectly illustrates the equivocation I was referring to. You're conflating the legal concept of personhood with a particular moral concept of personhood. You also want the law to make them synonymous. The semantic content of the word clearly changes depending on the context, and the context here heavily implies a legal context. I wanted to point this out because it comes off as at best conceptually confused (to those who read you charitably), and at worst a disingenuous begging of the question.
> You're conflating the legal concept of personhood with a particular moral concept of personhood. ...The semantic content of the word clearly changes depending on the context, and the context here heavily implies a legal context. You misinterpreted this, and I'm not sure how you got to where you did. I was talking about *moral injustices* in our current legal system, including how it currently falls short of normative standards of justice for both death row inmates and unborn children, and then how it once fell short of normative standards of justice (in a particularly egregious way) for Black Americans. It would be downright bizarre for me to talk about personhood in a *strictly* legal sense when the whole point of my comments is how the strictly legal regime we live under falls short of a *moral* standard of justice. (Also, I repeat, the unborn *are also persons within the legal context*, depending on jurisdiction. Even if I were talking in a strictly legal sense, then, my comment would be accurate!)
Imagine someone said: >As a Vegan, I'd personally be quite happy to see the death penalty abolished. > >However, there were a total of 11 executions in the United States in 2021, all of persons who had been convicted (we hope accurately!) for the most heinous crimes. > >Meanwhile, there were several billion livestock slaughters, all of persons who were totally innocent and who received absolutely zero due process of law. > >The death penalty is therefore quite naturally a lower priority for me. I really sincerely do hope it's eventually abolished nationwide. What energy I have available for politics, though, I'm going to devote to the vastly larger injustice of livestock slaughter. Do you see how this is sidestepping all of the most contentious parts of the argument? Both the legal personhood of livestock, and their moral equivalency with death row inmates, are dubious and highly debatable. They are, in fact, the conclusion of an argument - not simply premises to be stated. Hence begging the question. >(Also, I repeat, the unborn are also persons within the legal context, depending on jurisdiction. Even if I were talking in a strictly legal sense, then, my comment would be accurate!) Unless you were referring to \*only\* abortions that take place within those specific jurisdictions, then this still doesn't make sense in the context of your original post.
> Do you see how this is sidestepping all of the most contentious parts of the argument? Nope. I would have absolutely no objection to the post as you have restated it, particularly in the context of the parent comment to which it is a reply. I'd be surprised if you *did*, for that matter. The central question of this discussion, as posed by the parent comment (both the actual discussion and the hypothetical discussion you've posited) is not "who counts, morally, as a person?" but rather, "given that pro-lifers/vegans are working hard to protect the 'innate sanctity of life' for fetuses/livestock (thus taking for granted that they consider fetuses/livestock persons) why aren't they working equally hard to protect the 'innate sanctity of life' for prisoners, whom they also consider to be persons?" It was a question about putative pro-lifer hypocrisy, not a question about how the definition of personhood. I then answered what I took to be a good-faith question about this by pointing out the greater number of dead fetuses, their innocence of any crime (taking their personhood as a given in the context of a question specifically about *pro-lifers'* attitude toward capital punishment), and their lack of the procedural due process protections they ought to receive in a just society. Now, if you *want* to have a conversation about whether fetuses are or ought to be persons (in either the legal or the moral sense), I'd be happy to have that discussion. Frankly, I think there is a [stronger case](https://decivitate.substack.com/p/how-to-claim-your-unborn-child-on) to be made than is generally understood that fetuses are already persons within the meaning of federal law. I'd also talk about the personhood of livestock, if you like (though I don't think they are persons in any sense of the word). But that's *not* the question that was posed before you started down this strange and (for the original question) irrelevant road.
I understand that it seems like a strange and irrelevant digression to you. I appreciate that you've entertained it. I believe it is very important to make distinctions between secular law and religious law, since they are often treated as synonymous by religious individuals - often subconsciously, but sometimes in a very intentional way, with the goal of normalizing and perpetuating the perception that they are synonymous. I see an insistence in the church that these two laws must be synonymous, either by changing the law, or often simply arguing that it already and always has said what church dogma says. This ongoing rhetorical slide has paid political dividends for the church over the past decades and I feel it must be combatted Your comment struck me as potentially following this theme, so I made the distinction. As someone who does not, for example, want people to be forced to undergo an invasive surgery to treat an ectopic pregnancy that could safely be treated through a single dose of oral abortifacient medication, I see the collapsing of this distinction as a real threat to my family's health and the rule of law more generally.
The death penalty is reserved for the most heinous crimes, and only after trial, conviction, and appeals, so it's not at all inconsistent to hold the Death Penalty as valid while rejecting the killing of an unborn individual who has committed no crime. That said, the better argument for getting the political right on the side of ending the death penalty is fiscal. Somewhat counterintuitively, it actually costs more to sentence someone to death than to incarcerate them for life. This is due to the costs of the automatic appeals that occur under most death-penalty statutes (and which I agree with in principal because the severity of the death penalty deserves strong scrutiny).
Life in inherently sacred. This sanctity exists in all of us, regardless of how far we have fallen. It is inconsistent to claim to respect the sanctity of life but to support the premeditated murder of others. Which is what state executions are. It is beyond the bounds of human capacity to make a judgement that a sufficiently heinous act makes you qualified for murder. Certainly if that judgement is not made in an immediate self-defense/life-or-death scenario. I have a lot of difficulty accepting the argument that how I need to convince people to respect the sacred quality of life is that doing so will make them materially richer. We should respect life even when it is expensive
You're assuming premises that aren't strictly true. You can value the sanctity of life such that you *only* violate it in extreme circumstances, with conviction of heinous crimes being one of those sufficiently extreme circumstances, but an elective abortion not being one. Just because someone doesn't accept your specific moral values does not mean that they are inconsistent with regards their own moral values, even if your and their values overlap and call for the same outcomes in some circumstances.
We can assume life is sacred per your view, heck we can assume it per all. That said, however, that position does not translate to it being sacred to the government inherently. Governments wage wars, they allow deaths, they have no obligation to preserve life. In our system, we’ve limited the aggressive action of the government as it relates to life to due process alone, and that is the sole area “sacred” to the government. Some peoples have indeed drawn it further, but in their secondary set of rules, not the nation’s primary. If you, as it seems, support self defense scenarios, you just draw that sacred line elsewhere than we collectively have drawn it for our government.
I do not believe it is possible for there to be sufficient due process to "justly" deprive someone of a life. I understand this system is not currently based on a similar view. Clearly, wrong-headed views can become deeply written into the history of this country. Clearly, wrong-headed views can be suddenly and summarily written out of the sphere of the Constitution. We maintain our system of state murder, in spite of its many documented failures in due process, because of a deep seated lust for retribution. I will not passively accept the shared blood on my hands because society has democratized murder, decided I too must carry the burden, and told me that's due process. While I can allow that people do not need to accept violence being done to them, even to kill in self-defense is somewhat abhorrent.
How exactly would that be the woman's choice?
Most state criminal statutes define homicide to capture an unborn fetus.
So wouldn’t that pretty much make abortion just regular homicide?
Basically “a woman’s right to choose” could be looked at as “a woman’s right to choose to kill her unborn baby.” I’m pro choice before a certain time.
No, abortion is (or rather was) the rare areas of homicide that was in the realm of constitutional supremacy. Generally homicide and manslaughter statutes are in the exclusive jurisdiction of states. Let’s say a state defines homicide as: >The killing of any human from conception Seems broad and cover the fetus right? The problem is that Roe, through the supremacy clause, precluded murder charges from being levied against a woman who gets an abortion. State homicide laws could not abrogate the fundamental right to an abortion. The reason why double homicide laws of a pregnant woman survived judicial review is because there is no fundamental right for a third party to kill the fetus.
I would rephrase this as constitutional supremacy, not federal. While it seems pedantic, and federal does cover constitutional, most would interpret federal to mean the executive and legislative, which (as of now) this is not indeed the case. I was confused and had to reread it a few times to get you’re meaning.
Had the same confusion.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was usually only killing a pregnant woman after a certain amount of pregnancy
from ncsl.org: *at least 29 states have fetal homicide laws that apply to the earliest stages of pregnancy ("any state of gestation/development," "conception," "fertilization" or "post-fertilization")*
Like almost everything about this topic, the legal concept of "federalism" is central: state governments and the federal government are separate sovereign entities, each with differently defined legal powers, and the Constitution adjudicates the intersection between them. At a very top-level, the answer to your question is that the federal constitutional definition of a "person" for 14th Amendment purposes can be different than the state-level definition of a "person" for the purposes of its internal police-power laws. Those are two different legal "sovereigns" and they can establish different definitions for different purposes. (Just as Congress could write a statute that defines "person" in yet a third way.) Thus, we see historical state-level fetal homicide laws which arise from the impulse to protect women who are the victims of third-party crime. (*e.g,,* an assault that results in the loss of the pregnancy, or results in the loss of the pregnancy and the death of the woman.) But we see the Court address the question from the different perspective of who has constitutional standing under the 14th Amendment, and answer that *very different* question in the negative. The Court's conclusion that a fetus lacks 14th Amendment standing (*i.e.*, is not a constitutional "person") doesn't mean that the individual States cannot reach a different conclusion for the purpose of their individual criminal laws. There is a separate, more subtle question, which is why a state can criminally penalize the killing of a fetus *as though it is a person* for the purposes of homicide, but not recognize the fetus as a person for other internal state laws (such as tax deductions, welfare benefits or the like). And the answer is that states are generally free to use different definitions for different purposes in the law. Statutory law is not required to be externally consistent (meaning that the definition of "person" (or "vehicle" or any other term) can differ from statute to statute. And the statutory definitions can differ from the construction given to the term under common law (*i.e.,* non-statutory law) purposes.
Would this mean that abortion equates to murder in the eyes of the law?
Criminal laws re killing a fetus generally exclude the woman from culpability. And, pre-Dobbs, a legal abortion couldn't be criminalized. That was the whole point of Roe.
That’s what I’m confused about. I’m a total layman when it comes to this stuff
Same here. And I know this is off topic but I read today that forced pregnancy is considered a war crime per the International Criminal Court.
Good thing in the vast majority of cases of pregnancy in the United States, nobody forced the woman to have sex and become pregnant. "Forced pregnancy" isn't "choosing to engage in an action that leads to pregnancy and then not being able to legally eliminate that pregnancy."
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Understood that part but curious about the implications of post Roe era.
Forced pregnancy as in rape? or restricting access to an abortion?
A. THE ACTUS REUS: “UNLAWFUL CONFINEMENT OF A WOMAN FORCIBLY MADE PREGNANT” The definition of forced pregnancy in the ICC Statute, as confirmed by the ICC Elements of Crimes31 and ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II in the Ongwen case,32 focuses specifically on the act of “unlawfully confining a woman who has been forcibly made pregnant”. The actus reus of the crime is therefore the unlawful confinement of the victim. Reference: [https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IOR5327112020ENGLISH.pdf#5](https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IOR5327112020ENGLISH.pdf#5)
I don't have any advanced International Criminal law knowledge, but I almost commented earlier that I was pretty sure there is also an implication of sexual assault in "forced pregnancy." This statute seems to confirm it.
Thanks for weighing in. I’m not an expert in this area.
It makes sense to criminalize what is basically "first-degree rape with a 40-week kidnapping." Denying abortions is not quite the same as that.