(Potentially in some US states): Your biological material was found in the bio-waste can of a facility that was performing illegal gynecological operations. You're under arrest for the murder of a fetus.
To continue, if a fetus Auto aborts after the woman has eaten some ice cream and got infected with listeria can she be arrested for involuntary manslaughter?
Since birth control pills work in part by ensuring that an embryo cannot latch on to the uterus wall, can a woman taking birth control be arrested on suspicion of murder?
We haven't really grappled legally or morally with what is it mean to be a human person, and I guess we are going to have to
You're talking about the "sale of baby body parts", right?
Scandalous? Yes. Libelous? The NY Times described the practice:
> Companies that obtain [fetal] tissue from clinics and sell it to laboratories exist in a gray zone, legally. Federal law says they cannot profit from the tissue itself, but the law does not specify how much they can charge for processing and shipping.
> ...
> Many [labs] buy the tissue from companies that act as middlemen. Those companies pay small fees, usually $100 or less a specimen, to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, who say they charge only what they need to cover their expenses. The companies then process the tissue and sell it to researchers for higher prices that reflect the processing.
> The fees, which can run to thousands of dollars for a tiny vial of cells, do not break the law, according to Arthur Caplan, the director of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center.
> “It appears to be legal, no matter how much you charge,” Dr. Caplan said, adding that there appears to be little or no oversight of the processing fees. “It’s a very gray and musty area as to what you can charge.”
It also only applies to a fetus created as the result of rape. A fetus created by consensual sex is like if you walked into the hospital, sat down in the room, and plugged the needle into your arm yourself.
Clearly, collecting bone marrow from somebody by force is and active action, and to justify this, one would have to say that the active right of the person needing the bone marrow trumps your passive right to bodily autonomy.
For an abortion, you turn this on its head. If no action is performed, the fetus will most likely surivive in the womb until it's born.
Now, you may claim that fetus is somehow commiting a crime by extracting resources from the mother's body. The problem with this argument, is that this crime is first of all not voluntary. The fetus doesn't have a way to stop doing so by an act of will. Second, the fetus is not developed enough that we would assign moral agency to it (just like we would not do that to a baby after birth).
Now, if you believe (like me, especially in the first trimester) that the fetus is not a person, and doesn't have the legal rights of a person, it is still probably ok to abort it.
But if you think that the fetus IS a person, it also follows that it deserves the same protections as a person. In other words, the passive right of the fetus to not be "murdered" is in conflict with the passive right of the mother to not have its resources extracted. The fact that the passive right to not be murdered may be considered a stronger right than the mothers right to bodily autonomy.
Also, in this situation, there are two more factors to take into account:
1) This conflict between the two subjects involved was not caused by any actions of the fetus. Unless she was raped, though, the mother most likely played a part in the conception of the fetus, so bears some responsibility for being in such a situation.
2) Even though there is a real conflict of interests, the MOST passive approach is to not abort, while aborting requires active intervention.
So, I would argue, IF the baby is to be considered 100% a person, with exactly the same protections by the law as the mother, it is logical that abortion is banned.
Now, personally, I don't agree with this premise. In fact, I see the fetus as becoming a person gradually, and I'm not even sure if it reaches fully 100% at birth (though close enough for practial purposes, at least as long as the mother is not starving). Personally, I think the fetus at conception should have 0 person-rights. After 2-3 months, maybe similar to a farm animal, and during the 2nd trimester, probably similiar to your favourite pet.
Only during the 3rd trimester, once the baby would be able to survive outside the womb, would I consider it to get close to deserve the same protectino as a baby after birth.
> I wasn't clear then: I don't care in the context of this question. We already don't require you to donate bone marrow to save a specific person.
And with all due respect, I think perhaps what you're really saying is not that you disagree with the reasoning above, but rather that you refuse to seriously consider the premise of the Christian fundamentalists. In other words, I think you refuse to really imagine that you see the fetus as a 100% full person.
Now, I'm not meaning to imply malice on your part. To understand another person's perspective when they disagree with you about something fundamental is hard It requires a lot of empathy to do so, and it is not easy to find this kind of empathy for a perspective or group of people that one has negative emotions for.
I see that perspective, but the rules around reporting and disposing of bodies have purposes independent of the abortion debate, e.g., to protect the rights of live-born disabled babies from intentional euthanasia.
Here, the police laid the first set of three charges before there was any allegation of anything other than miscarriage/stillbirth, so it's hard to argue that the police were trying to punish the teenager for abortion in this particular case.
Well, it's your body, do what you want... but don't smoke around me. And don't infect me. You shouldn't be free with your free choice to impose consequences on me.
For that matter, it's your body, but a fetus isn't your body.
I would encourage anyone about to make a blithe comment about embryos being people to consider how they would feel about criminal charges against someone who murders a pregnant woman.
I'd also recommend everyone read this sentence:
>]he Wrongful Death of a Minor Act is sweeping and unqualified. It applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation. It is not the role of this Court to craft a new limitation based on our own view of what is or is not wise public policy. That is especially true where, as here, the People of this State have adopted a Constitutional amendment directly aimed at stopping courts from excluding ‘unborn life’ from legal protection.”
...before complaining about unaccountable judiciary.
Misleading comment. You're talking about murder but this only involved embryos. Many/most people don't consider that murder any more than the spilling of seed is. If you want to push a political view don't couch it as a systemic complaint.
What's the endgame here? It's not clear from the article.
Assuming they're not suggesting that the fetus be removed from the mother, are they aiming to get the mother freed? Are they just aiming to have the mother temporarily moved to somewhere with better healthcare? Are they aiming to make a point about how fetal-personhood doesn't work with many aspects of the law?
Tangential, but since Arizona passed a law recognizing personhood at conception, it would seem they'd be guilty of unlawful detainment of the fetus if they keep pregnant women as prisoners.
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