Abortion Battle Shifts to Bill for Unborn

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON -- Expanding rights for the unborn without limiting mothers' reproductive rights is an issue that confronts lawmakers this week when the House takes up a bill that would make it separate federal crimes to injure or kill both a woman and her fetus.

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act is regarded by conservative groups as one of the most important social policy measures that could come before Congress this year.

"It's a step in the right direction, toward recognizing the humanity of the unborn," said Genevieve Wood, spokeswoman for the Family Research Council.

The National Right to Life Committee cites polls showing that 80 percent of the public believes there should be a law recognizing the killing of a fetus as a homicide.

more...............

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-rights-of-the-unborn,0,424720.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Why is it

these types seem to want all kinds of rights for the unborn but are unwilling to allow women to have rights such as the right to choose?

Take my word for it, if this passes, we'll see more mothers incarcerated for having miscarriages, just like the drug addicted mother in SC....

[bleedingheart]

3. you bring up another good point...this kind of legislation is

just to volatile...

Men could go to prison for beating their wives into a miscarriage...but men could send their wives to prison because they felt the wife's behavior resulted in the miscarriage... "her aerobics class caused this judge..."..."her smoking resulted in this miscarriage..."...etc

[Occulus]

12. it's worse

A vindictive prosecutor could argue that emotional distress caused her to miscarry.

The guy could gamble. He could have a group of male friends his wife just despises with whom he hangs out with once a week. My point is, it could be anything silly. Anything at all.

[bleedingheart]

2. I have mixed feelings about this kind of legislation

on one hand I am pro choice but once a woman makes a choice to have a child and someone beats the living shit out of her and it directly results in a miscarriage...I think it is a crime. I really don't think it should qualify for murder because technically the fetus/child hasn't even breathed the air just yet...but I could see it being part of some other lesser charge.

One of my sister's friends lost her child in the 8th month when a drunk driver hit her car. She lost the baby, her uterus and was unable to do anything for about six months due to the extent of her injuries... the drunk driver got only a slap on the wrists because it was his first offense.

[iverglas]

9. no need for mixed feelings

on one hand I am pro choice but once a woman makes a choice to have a child and someone beats the living shit out of her and it directly results in a miscarriage...I think it is a crime.

Of course it's a crime. It's a very serious crime. Against the woman.

Even if the act that causes the miscarriage does not cause grave bodily harm to the woman, it is still a very serious offence.

Consider that sexual assault ("rape") is regarded as a very serious offence, even if the victim is not seriously physically harmed.

Heck, fraud is sometimes regarded, and punished, as a very serious offence -- and no one is physically harmed at all in that one.

Sexual assault is defined and prosecuted as a special kind of assault. An assault that causes a miscarriage could reasonably also be defined and prosecuted and punished as a special kind of assault, if existing assault laws seemed inadequate to express society's denunciation of the act, punish people who commit it and deter other people from committing it.

But causing a miscarriage ain't homicide. Any more than fraud is.

And to define it as "homicide", or punish it as if it were homicide, is a denial of equal protection and due process to the people charged that way.

It is also simply a dog's breakfast of stupidity, and for a law to permit one person (the pregnant woman, or her doctor) to "kill" a "human being", but prohibit someone else from doing it. A law that does that is quite simply an ass, and the people who propose such laws are ... well, either witless jackasses or cunning fascists.

If it's a human being, then killing it is homicide -- and no one may be permitted by law to commit homicide. If it isn't a human being, then killing it is not homicide, and no one may be punished by law for doing something s/he did not do.

.

[loyalsister]

13. Very very well said!

Awesome analysis! This back door crap has to be prevented. It's emotional strings trickery for ordinarily pro-choice people.

[Zeke]

4. Where's This All Heading?

Go watch a foreign film called OSAMA.

It's nopt widley released, but it's the story of a young Afghan gild named Osama, who masquerades as a boy ala Yentl, so she can get a job and feed her starving family.

The Taliban (the GOP) finds her out, marries her of to an old-old man, who keeps her locked up in a jail cell as his property.

No rights for women! Slavery for women!

That's the GOP.

[Malva Zebrina]

5. ain't it grand?

The National Right to Life Committee cites polls showing that 80 percent of the public believes there should be a law recognizing the killing of a fetus as a homicide.


Who cares what 80 percent of the public believes? My mother taught me that if everyone else is jumping off the bridge, that does not mean that I must also jump off the bridge.

These same 80 percent believe a god was born to a virgin who apparently was infused with the genes of a god without the contribution of her own genes, and also believe other tales that are akin, in my opinion, to fairy tale fantasies. Excuse me, but a child has , as we now know, and which the religious advocates of the Jesus miracle birth did NOT know, both the genes of its mother and it's father. err---what genes of the father , supposedly the great god in the sky, are present here.; the god Jesus had to have had the genes of both his mother and his father. err--we know his mother had these genes but there is not a record of the genes of a god, because he, is NOT human.


This is the delemma is it not?

Do people of faith ever question this in lieu of modern science?

Yes indeed, Jesus was against abortion, right? err-where does he say that, just to be somewhat on line and correct here.

[donco6]

7. Even the Bible doesn't view it that way.

"And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide (Exodus 21:22).

So if the Bible really is the "basis of law" for the U.S., as these fundies claim, why don't they follow it?

[Malva Zebrina]

6. as an addendum to my post

what do these non thinking people think we do with all of those test tube conjoined fetuses who are in cryovac tubes in fertility clinics as we speak?

Here is the aborted "human life " that we are supposed to believe is a human being-- a real live little baby all cute and alive and sometimes even talking to us. Something is not quite right here.

http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:BSC8i1c1fS8J:www.advancedfertility.com/pics

err. how do we describe this as a human being? Can anyone honestly say this is a human being?

Help me, this is NOT a human being at all. It is a collection of cells and as benign as an appendix.

I do not have the slightest bit of guilt and do NOT subscribe to the accusations that any woman is guilty of murder under our laws and under this despicable prick of a born again , coke snorting, little coward of a man, will allow my sisters to be arrested for murder for aborting a few cells because they wish to control their family and protect their own health.

]George Bush is evil. He is out to inslave women. HE does not know why because he is too stupid, but he declares these things under the orders of others who control him.

He is indeed a stupid idiot that escaped from a
Texas small town.

[Hekate]

14. There are people actually trying to adopt leftover frozen zygotes

Yes, adopt and implant and bring to term, here in the US. For religious reasons. Why does this sound crazy? I have read that in Britain fertility clinics only hold frozen zygotes for 5 years, and then they are automatically disposed of. That strikes me as more rational by far, and in a way kinder, because as much as couples invest their hopes, dreams, and money into producing these bits of cells, they're not babies, they're blueprints that may or may not grow into babies.

But as to Dubya's policies: he's got an extension to a medical plan designed for poor children that allows a woman to have prenatal care. See, the clever part is this: the medical care is for her unborn child, not her. Before conception and after giving birth, the woman is entitled to no medical care at all.

Can you spell "vessel"?

Ancient Greeks put the seal on their patriarchal view of the humankind thusly: Women contribute nothing to the unborn child but their uterus. The father, like a farmer plowing his field, plants the seed that in time grows into a baby, and is born. The woman's uterus is the vessel that holds the man's seed, and clearly the baby is nourished with her blood, but she makes no other contribution.

As for Bush and his religious cohorts, this is all about God's Will (their god) and about controlling women, who are not to be trusted in such matters.

Hekate

[boobooday]

8. Oh Hello

We have yet to have an equal rights amendment for women, but we are going to have rights for the unborn.

These people are trying to squeeze through every crevice. Right into our most personal of spaces.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[GoddessOfGuinness]

10. If the unborn have rights...

Shouldn't pregnant women get another tax deduction for their unborn?

[I AM SPARTACUS]

11. every woman who ever had a pregnancy should file amended returns...