Protecting Pregnant Women And Her Fetus
alternative to granting fetus the personhood
Forum: Strap-on.org
Date: 02/28/2004
Following is from the discussion about the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act" (HR1997) which treats attack on a pregnant woman as separate crimes against the woman and her fetus.
lori hollet wrote:
Its implications about outlawing abortion aside, I've actually always been sympathetic to the logic behind part of this bill.
[snip]
If I'm pregnant, and I intend to continue the pregnancy to full term, and someone, say, commits a felony, like assault, on me, which ends the pregnancy, then it sort of makes sense to me that the person would be charged with manslaughter or felony murder.
If you agree that abortion is not murder, then the killing of the fetus cannot be manslaughter either. What would make sense is if the crime you are describing (i.e. an attack on the pregnant woman that ends her pregnancy) is construed as an offense against the woman, and not against the fetus. She should be entitled to compensation specifically for her loss of the viable fetus in addition to other damages caused by the criminal act; the perpetrator would be held accountable to the crime of ending a woman's pregnancy against her will in addition to other charges.
In fact, the proposed bill could win bipartisan support and meet the same exact stated goals if it were re-written to protect the right of the pregnant woman to her fetus, rather than protecting the rights of the fetus as a separate person. Of course Republicans won't agree to such a change because they don't really care about the pregnant women at all; they are only using this bill to further curtail women's right to choose. They are trying to manipulate us with the phony logic.