• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Two abortion clinic workers plead guilty to murder

Page 4 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
It would all depend on the circumstances. If the mother's life was in danger, then I'm all for aborting it. Hell, I'd abort it twice if I could. Otherwise, I would consider it morally wrong. Again though, this is an attempt to use a tiny fraction of procedures to attack what is otherwise a godsend to women everywhere.

You are also freely wheeling back and forth between the legal definition of murder and the moral definition of murder. Defending something in a legal sense and defending something in a moral sense are frequently very different things. It could certainly be a legal procedure, as fetuses are not legally people, and at the same time be a moral offense.

Question: If it is not legally a person what legal basis does the state have to charge and convict people of 2 murders for killing a pregnant woman who at that point in her pregnancy could have legally aborted the fetus.


Disclaimer: I am not taking a side in the entire abortion debate, simply asking a, imho, reasonable question. If it isn't a person then it isn't murder, it its murder then its a person.
 
Murder is the killing of a person without justification. A non-viable fetus isn't a person, so aborting within the first two trimesters (pre-viability) cannot legally be termed "murder."

Killing a viable fetus without justification (such as protecting the life of the mother) is murder under current law.

You claim that you cannot understand how something that wasn't murder 10 years ago is murder today. But how about smoking a joint? In many states, smoking a joint is now a mere infraction, whereas 10 or 20 years ago that same act was a felony. Do you have any difficulty understanding THAT change? I thought not.

It seems that the justice system disagrees with you.

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/jul/02/man-charged-with-killing-pregnant-wife/

http://www.vvdailypress.com/articles/killing-18460-allegedly-victorville.html

Plenty of other cases too.
 
Question: If it is not legally a person what legal basis does the state have to charge and convict people of 2 murders for killing a pregnant woman who at that point in her pregnancy could have legally aborted the fetus.
I could be wrong about this, but I believe at least some of those "fetus death is murder" laws were passed at the urging of anti-abortion activists to lead towards criminalizing abortion.
 
Question: If it is not legally a person what legal basis does the state have to charge and convict people of 2 murders for killing a pregnant woman who at that point in her pregnancy could have legally aborted the fetus.

Disclaimer: I am not taking a side in the entire abortion debate, simply asking a, imho, reasonable question. If it isn't a person then it isn't murder, it its murder then its a person.

It's due to the differences of federal and state law. Fetuses are not persons under federal law. The states make their own judgments as to what constitutes personhood to them.

There have been other attempts to make laws with murder like charges attached to them for killing babies in utero, but these skirt the personhood issue.
 
I could be wrong about this, but I believe at least some of those "fetus death is murder" laws were passed at the urging of anti-abortion activists to lead towards criminalizing abortion.

You are probably correct but my question remains, how can a multiple people be serving prison sentences at this very time for murdering a fetus that is by legal definition not human life? And no, I am not supporting people killing a womans unborn child against her will.

It seems like a huge legal contradiction to me.
 
It's due to the differences of federal and state law. Fetuses are not persons under federal law. The states make their own judgments as to what constitutes personhood to them.

There have been other attempts to make laws with murder like charges attached to them for killing babies in utero, but these skirt the personhood issue.

but if state law defines killing a fetus as murder then how is abortion in that particular state legal?
 
Viability is the ability to survive outside of the uterus... not what you're describing.

True, but it's used as a measure of individuality, as that is the determiner of whether or not the child is abortable (sic) by your definition. When outside the womb, an infant is no more an individual (in terms of its dependence on others) than it was inside the womb. Is it therefore no less abortable?
 
True, but it's used as a measure of individuality, as that is the determiner of whether or not the child is abortable (sic) by your definition. When outside the womb, an infant is no more an individual (in terms of its dependence on others) than it was inside the womb. Is it therefore no less abortable?

Incorrect.
 
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/us-crime-abortion-pennsylvania-idUSTRE79Q7GK20111027



Safe and legal. Safe for whom?



There is a practical difference to killing a baby inside the womb and killing it outside, but not a moral difference.

I'm reminded of the Partial Birth abortion ban, which passed in the House with 218 republicans and 63 democrats against 4 republicans and 137 democrats, and in the Senate by similar margins. It had to survive a 5-4 Supreme Court challenge in Gonzales v. Carhard with all liberal justices in dissent. As a reminder, the operative part of the banned procedure was this:



Leftists: Would you even charge these people with murder? What did they do that differed terribly from the procedure that you were fine with 8 years ago?

You're just making a silly argument, but if you can not see a difference I feel sorry for you.
 
Proclaiming a fetus gains rights when it no longer requires the body of another specific person to keep it alive (its biological mother) makes at least as much sense as claiming a fertilized egg should have rights as a person, and I'd claim much more.

The egg might become a person someday, but an egg has no brain, no consciousness, no heart or lungs. Why should it be sacred unless you think that for religious reasons?

Even that is up for debate. Religious scholars differ on when their god provides the empty shell with the soul that they'd say gives it rights. Some say it doesn't happen until a baby is born and draws a first breath.
 
100% dependence on others inside the womb vs. 100% dependence on others outside the womb looks like a pretty thin difference.
You're a fucking idiot.

Abortion is legal because a woman has the right to become unpregnant for the same reasons she as the right to refuse to become pregnant against her will. If you acknowledge that a woman has the right to defend herself from becoming unwillingly pregnant in the first place, then you already support the right to abortion. The right of bodily integrity and autonomy is the same.

Nobody, person or fetus, born or unborn, has the right to occupy the body of another person against that person's will. Nobody, person or fetus, born or unborn, has the right to forcefully extract nourisment from another person's metabolism, nor the right to inject another person with body waste and hormones against that person's will. These are rights enjoyed by all persons. They are fundamental, and any waiver of them must be explicit.

Inside the womb the fetus is metabolically dependent on only one person, and outside the womb it is metabolically dependent on nobody. That not a "thin" difference. It is a world of difference. It's existence inside the mother is a state of perpetual violation of the mother's rights, and as a consequence it only exists under the provisional consent afforded it by her refusal to abort it. After birth, none of these conditions exist, and they are precisely the conditions that make the difference.

I've made these same points to you several time before, and despite their completely unassailble factual basis, you continue to spruik this bullshit either because you are not smart enough to acknowledge the facts, or you deliberately refuse. Either way, I feel completely justified in telling you to take your ignorant, authoritarian misogyny and shove it up your ass, fucktard.
 
It absolutely is enforcing morality. It enforces death on the child, at whose expense comes the mother's "freedom";
No child has ever been killed in an abortion, only fetuses. You can easily tell the difference because the former lacks an umbilical cord.

...a freedom that she herself took steps to restrict unless she was raped.
Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy, no matter how badly you want it to be, and no matter how many times you falsely claim that it is.

Should infanticide be allowed too by this reasoning?
What "reasoning"? A jumble of false statements does not constitute "reasoning."

Why should we restrict abortion to inside the womb?
Because that's where the fetus is violating the rights of a person, dumbshit.
 
Proclaiming a fetus gains rights when it no longer requires the body of another specific person to keep it alive (its biological mother) makes at least as much sense as claiming a fertilized egg should have rights as a person, and I'd claim much more.

The egg might become a person someday, but an egg has no brain, no consciousness, no heart or lungs. Why should it be sacred unless you think that for religious reasons?

As I said earlier it has no bearing on religion, but stems from a logical extrapolation that if a child was a human being after birth, there's no substantive reason why it wasn't a human being 5 minutes before birth. Or 10 minutes before that. Or 2 days before that. Or a month. A fertilized egg doesn't magically turn into a human being at some point. It was a human being the moment it was fertilized.

Considering that you guys want to kill the kid, I think the onus of proof should be on you to prove it isn't human, rather than on us to prove that it is.

If you fire a gun into a house that appears empty, you can't defend yourself when you kill someone accidentally by claiming that the house didn't take sufficient steps to prove it was occupied.
 
Last edited:
As I said earlier it has no bearing on religion, but stems from a logical extrapolation that if a child was a human being after birth, there's no substantive reason why it wasn't a human being 5 minutes before birth. Or 10 minutes before that. Or 2 days before that. Or a month.
If a man is a husband after marriage, then there's no substantive reason why he wasn't a husband before it was married. Or 10 minutes before that. Or 2 days before that. Or a month.

A fertilized egg doesn't magically turn into a human being at some point.
It isn't magic. It just a matter of classification. Persons are born.

It was a human being the moment it was fertilized.
False.

Considering that you guys want to kill the kid,
Fuck you. I do not want to kill any kids, shit-for-brains.

I think the onus of proof should be on you to prove it isn't human, rather than on us to prove that it is.
It is human. This is an irrelevant fact, however. I know this because I'm not a stupid conservative jackoff.

If you fire a gun into a house that appears empty, you can't defend yourself when you kill someone accidentally by claiming that the house didn't take sufficient steps to prove it was occupied.
That is a fantastically irrelevant analogy. Good job, moron.
 
Two abortion clinic workers plead guilty to murderhttp://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/us-crime-abortion-pennsylvania-idUSTRE79Q7GK20111027

Safe and legal. Safe for whom?

There is a practical difference to killing a baby inside the womb and killing it outside, but not a moral difference.

I'm reminded of the Partial Birth abortion ban, which passed in the House with 218 republicans and 63 democrats against 4 republicans and 137 democrats, and in the Senate by similar margins. It had to survive a 5-4 Supreme Court challenge in Gonzales v. Carhard with all liberal justices in dissent. As a reminder, the operative part of the banned procedure was this:

Leftists: Would you even charge these people with murder? What did they do that differed terribly from the procedure that you were fine with 8 years ago?

OP how does this affect you personally?

Why are you up in others business?
 
As I said earlier it has no bearing on religion, but stems from a logical extrapolation that if a child was a human being after birth, there's no substantive reason why it wasn't a human being 5 minutes before birth. Or 10 minutes before that. Or 2 days before that. Or a month. A fertilized egg doesn't magically turn into a human being at some point. It was a human being the moment it was fertilized.

Why isn't an unfertilized egg a human being to you? By your logic "there's no substantive reason why it wasn't a human being" before the sperm reached it.
 
Why isn't an unfertilized egg a human being to you? By your logic "there's no substantive reason why it wasn't a human being" before the sperm reached it.

Because an unfertilized egg's potential is no more than a dead unfertilized egg. The same goes for sperm. Killing them is no different than killing skin cells when you skin your knee. (actually they're already dead, but whatever).

Barring an external hindrance to its development, a fertilized egg will mature into a child and then an adult human being.
 
this thread got troll and stupid written all over it from the OP post onwards.
I can't even understand the point that OP is trying to make, but I can guess that's he's trying to relate this abomination to legal abortion through some twisted logic.

Because an unfertilized egg's potential is no more than a dead unfertilized egg. The same goes for sperm. Killing them is no different than killing skin cells when you skin your knee. (actually they're already dead, but whatever).

Barring an external hindrance to its development, a fertilized egg will mature into a child and then an adult human being.
Barring an external hindrance to fertilization, an unfertilized egg will become a fertilized egg.
Same logic.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top