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Florida Man Charged with Murder for Killing Ex-Girlfriend's FETUS[W330;338]

Lord of Planar said:
Several states have drafted legislation that allows such things to be charged as murder. I believe, as liberal as my state is, that Oregon is one of them.
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Not at 6 weeks.



JayDubya said:
You don't seem to understand.

There is one, and only one exception whereupon one may kill another human being in aggression and have it NOT be against the law. I do not and have never agreed with any such sort of exception, as aggression is always wrong, and it should be prosecuted, but I can recognize what the current legal norm is, despite all reason. The only case in which an aggressive homicide is never prosecuted is with an abortion.

This, of course, was not an abortion. It was not elected, it was not prescribed / performed by a physician. Sadly, in our ridiculous society, unborn human beings are either considered subhuman property or not based upon the whims of their mother. Well, there was no such despicable whim here, and the human being in question was not regarded as subhuman property.

Ergo, murder, by statute. He could and should be prosecuted for exactly that, and frankly, at best, he should never be allowed to leave prison.
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Don't get your hopes up.
 
sangha said:
Actually, most of the Africans who were enslaved died before they ever got to america
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Actually I do not think that is quite accurate.I think most calculate the number not surviving to be between 12.5 and 15% being lost in the infamous Middle Passage. William Wilberforce stated the number to be about 4.5% that were lost on the Western Atlantic shores of Africa prior to sailing to the Americas. That would equate to a very large number, however it would rise to the level of "most".
 
JayDubya said:
You don't seem to understand.

There is one, and only one exception whereupon one may kill another human being in aggression and have it NOT be against the law. I do not and have never agreed with any such sort of exception, as aggression is always wrong, and it should be prosecuted, but I can recognize what the current legal norm is, despite all reason. The only case in which an aggressive homicide is never prosecuted is with an abortion.

This, of course, was not an abortion. It was not elected, it was not prescribed / performed by a physician. Sadly, in our ridiculous society, unborn human beings are either considered subhuman property or not based upon the whims of their mother. Well, there was no such despicable whim here, and the human being in question was not regarded as subhuman property.

Ergo, murder, by statute. He could and should be prosecuted for exactly that, and frankly, at best, he should never be allowed to leave prison.
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I just may not be in proper possession of what your definition of killing another "being in aggression" might be when you state, and I cut and past the quote, "one, and only one exception whereupon one may kill another human being in aggression and have it NOT be against the law"... so clue me in if its just semantics, but do we not allow many instances, in my view, of what "being in aggression" might be considered? For example, the police in the line of duty to protect and serve the law abiding, or an executioner at the behest and instruction of the state, a soldier in time of war, a person in their own or another's self defense... would those not be in aggression?

I agree with the concept that this, as sangha et al.,have identified previously under the 2004 Unborn Victims of Violence Act, certainly indicates that as a child in utero, a baby in the womb, can be considered a legal victim and potentially prosecuted just as if the act had been carried out upon the mother herself. This directly from the code to be considered murder under the law, not just morally.

"(2) (A) Except as otherwise provided in this paragraph, the punishment for that separate offense is the same as the punishment provided under Federal law for that conduct had that injury or death occurred to the unborn child’s mother."

Now this law truly gets it when it states, under Unborn Victims of Violence Act, (2) "(d) As used in this section, the term “unborn child” means a child in utero, and the term “child in utero” or “child, who is in utero” means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."

Now that folks is very close to being exactly my kinda law.
 
CanadaJohn said:
It doesn't negate the simple
comparison I made. In today's abortion laws, the woman has sole ability to determine life or death for a growing human being and in slavery, the slave owner had the sole ability to determine if a slave would live or die.
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In medical practice parents also have the right to pull the plug and refuse medical care for their children. Is that another form of slavery?
 
SmokeAndMirrors said:
I find the charge of murder utterly insulting to the woman.


First, this woman was violated by the scumbag that slipped her abortifacients.

Then, she was violated again by the fact that no one seems to care that she was seriously assaulted. All they care about is the embryo.

There's no aggravated assault charge. No grievous bodily harm charge. Just "murder" over an embryo, and "product tampering." There is NO CHARGE for what this man did to HER.

Women are not just uteri with heads. The fact that no one even cares what happened to the woman is insane and insulting.
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I was basically arguing this earlier. She shouldn't be ignored in the situation. I feel the guy totally disrespected her body and rights. It should be a crime against the woman.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
I
think it's murder if the fetus was past 12 weeks of development. Otherwise it's just major assault.

The fallacy is that many pro-choice like to pick and choose if it's murder based on who did it. It's either a living being or not, the biology of the baby has nothing to do with who killed it.
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I agree that there is a difference between a six week pregnancy and a late term pregnancy. If the baby is not viable, then I am not sure about a murder charge.
 
Voxx said:
Yes, this is inconsistent. If we define the fetus as a part of the woman's body, and not as a person, then this cannot be murder. It is a kind of assault or bodily harm. At most it can be 'mayhem.'
But it is definitely inconsistent to call it murder.
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I totally agree with this being inconsistent.

My view, however, goes in the other direction. Morally, and in this bright instance---shock of shocks--- even legally, its murder alright. The more profound inconsistency is that this newly melded life of the two is not considered from the very beginning to be a living human person. No one doubts that it is, indeed, alive, living, nobody seriously denies that this life is human, certainly is not a nightingale, none scientifically refutes that the conceived child immediately has a separate DNA, and does anybody out there realistically repudiate a claim that this new child was not ever intended to remain part of mother, never to become another arm or even just a wart, that the baby often even has a separate blood type… or that we were ALL [ even Jesus, believe him a man, god... or both], WE were all right there, right there in that exact same spot.

We all may want to call this new life something different, for whatever the various reasonings, but the preponderance of the facts remain, and to me beyond a shadow of doubt, that the child in utero, in the womb, is a valuable fellow human life, just like yours and mine, to be protected.

Now that should be self-evident.
 
SheWolf said:
I was basically arguing this earlier. She shouldn't be ignored in the situation. I feel the guy totally disrespected her body and rights. It should be a crime against the woman.
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It can/should be considered both. If there was perfect justice in this world, human detritus like this jerk should have traded their life for the one they robbed... in addition to the punishment for this absolutely heinous crime committed towards this seemingly, from all the reports, innocent and correct thinking young lady... she made a very bad choice in her life, but nobody should expect this as a consequence.
 
I see no problem with law defining this as a horrific offense with no necessity of approaching the term murder. There are criminal offenses allowing even life imprisonment without anyone "murdered." That would seem how such a law should be written. The word "murder" approaches too many complexities even outside of the abortion issue.
 
CanadaJohn said:
It doesn't negate the simple comparison I made. In today's abortion laws, the woman has sole ability to determine life or death for a growing human being and in slavery, the slave owner had the sole ability to determine if a slave would live or die.
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I can compare the abortion issue to slavery as well, with pregnant women being forced into involuntary servitude to produce offspring for people who contribute nothing to the process.
 
Gaugingcatenate said:
I just may not be in proper possession of what your definition of killing another "being in aggression" might be when you state, and I cut and past the quote, "one, and only one exception whereupon one may kill another human being in aggression and have it NOT be against the law"... so clue me in if its just semantics, but do we not allow many instances, in my view, of what "being in aggression" might be considered? For example, the police in the line of duty to protect and serve the law abiding, or an executioner at the behest and instruction of the state, a soldier in time of war, a person in their own or another's self defense... would those not be in aggression?
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Well, I'll go through these, sure.

1) If the police shoot someone who is, say, attacking the police or other people, then they're not killing in aggression; if they shoot them for no reason, then yeah, internal affairs and criminal charges await them, as that would be an aggressive killing.

2) An execution is not an aggressive killing. The person being executed was the aggressor; we do not put people on death row lightly - if you're on death row you have been convicted of at least one act of aggressive violence of lethal magnitude. I personally don't believe in the death penalty because of its finality and the possibility of executing an innocent person... but if you are convicted of a crime through due process, the state can imprison you, and as it stands right now, the state can sometimes execute you. The state does this to uphold the rights of the people against aggression.

3) A soldier in a time of war... while this does get fuzzy, not all war is unjust, and soldiers who conduct themselves honorably do not deliberately kill civilians. In a somewhat similar manner as described above, with the police, soldiers can conduct themselves in such a manner as to be incarcerated for murder in a military prison after a trial and being dishonorably discharged.


So yes, I stand by what I said - the only time an aggressive killing is permitted by law, in many nations including our own, is in the case of abortion. It is a justifiable homicide in the eyes of the law, despite the fact that it is aggressive.
 
JayDubya said:
So yes, I stand by what I said - the only time an aggressive killing is permitted by law, in many nations including our own, is in the case of abortion. It is a justifiable homicide in the eyes of the law, despite the fact that it is aggressive.
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The only time that you would grant an organism the right to parasitize a human being with legal protection is in the case of the fetus. It is justifiable because an unwanted pregnancy is an infringement of the pregnant woman's rights that she should-- and does-- have every right to end at her discretion.
 
Gaugingcatenate said:
I totally agree with this being inconsistent.

My view, however, goes in the other direction. Morally, and in this bright instance---shock of shocks--- even legally, its murder alright. The more profound inconsistency is that this newly melded life of the two is not considered from the very beginning to be a living human person. No one doubts that it is, indeed, alive, living, nobody seriously denies that this life is human, certainly is not a nightingale, none scientifically refutes that the conceived child immediately has a separate DNA, and does anybody out there realistically repudiate a claim that this new child was not ever intended to remain part of mother, never to become another arm or even just a wart, that the baby often even has a separate blood type… or that we were ALL [ even Jesus, believe him a man, god... or both], WE were all right there, right there in that exact same spot.

We all may want to call this new life something different, for whatever the various reasonings, but the preponderance of the facts remain, and to me beyond a shadow of doubt, that the child in utero, in the womb, is a valuable fellow human life, just like yours and mine, to be protected.

Now that should be self-evident.
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It's not even close to being self-evident.

The constitution only protects the rights of "persons". Under the constitution, a human is not a "person" until it is born. Therefore, until it is born, a child can not be protected by the law because the constitution does not grant the govt the power to protect the unborn
 
Viktyr Gehrig said:
The only time that you would grant an organism the right to parasitize a human being...
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... would be never. A human being cannot be a parasite to a human being.
 
JayDubya said:
Well, I'll go through these, sure.

1) If the police shoot someone who is, say, attacking the police or other people, then they're not killing in aggression; if they shoot them for no reason, then yeah, internal affairs and criminal charges await them, as that would be an aggressive killing.

2) An execution is not an aggressive killing. The person being executed was the aggressor; we do not put people on death row lightly - if you're on death row you have been convicted of at least one act of aggressive violence of lethal magnitude. I personally don't believe in the death penalty because of its finality and the possibility of executing an innocent person... but if you are convicted of a crime through due process, the state can imprison you, and as it stands right now, the state can sometimes execute you. The state does this to uphold the rights of the people against aggression.

3) A soldier in a time of war... while this does get fuzzy, not all war is unjust, and soldiers who conduct themselves honorably do not deliberately kill civilians. In a somewhat similar manner as described above, with the police, soldiers can conduct themselves in such a manner as to be incarcerated for murder in a military prison after a trial and being dishonorably discharged.


So yes, I stand by what I said - the only time an aggressive killing is permitted by law, in many nations including our own, is in the case of abortion. It is a justifiable homicide in the eyes of the law, despite the fact that it is aggressive.
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Thanks for the fairly complete explanation, and while I could ask a few more questions as I enjoy the nuance and a bit of quibbling, I think I have the gist, the spirit of what it was you were intending, and we are not that far from being pretty much in agreement, so no further argument.
 
JayDubya said:
... would be never. A human being cannot be a parasite to a human being.
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That's a convenient justification for ignoring the biological reality of pregnancy and therefore forcing women into slavery to human beings that don't even have rights.
 
SmokeAndMirrors said:
I'm glad to hear that. Still, had to make sure I put that into the ether, regardless of others.

As to your question, the only way this could be considered murder (and let's not forget, that's a legal term) is if abortion was considered justified homicide. Since it isn't, this charge has no legs to stand on legally.

This is just an obvious ploy by the anti-choice to push it up the court bracket and take another swipe at Row. They're using her as nothing but a pony to their ends.

So that means one of two things happens. Florida becomes yet another anti-woman state, or the guy walks away with pretty much no penalty for seriously assaulting this woman. Either result is an embarrassment to this country.

The fact that these people are more interested in making political moves than they are in protecting the woman and making sure this guy goes to jail says a lot about their priorities and how they feel (or don't feel) about women.
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I'm glad you chimed in - I'd hoped you would, and I expected you'd have just this reaction. I don't believe the woman pushed for the murder charge, it was the same state prosecutor who decided to jump in on the Trevon Martin case and up the charges to murder. It seems to me, as you've said, the defense in this matter has to be that the fetus is not a person, therefore, there is no murder. If the prosecution tries this as a first degree murder they have to convince the jury that the fetus is a person and then this becomes a case that will go all the way to the Supreme Court and could be a vehicle for having Roe v Wade narrowed.

The two legal positions cannot continue to stand together - they are not consistent.
 
Viktyr Gehrig said:
That's a convenient justification for ignoring the biological reality of pregnancy and therefore forcing women into slavery to human beings that don't even have rights.
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If you were interested in biological reality you wouldn't compare natural mammalian reproduction to parasitism appropriate of nothing.

If you were interested in opposing slavery you wouldn't support the law considering living human beings to be subhuman property.
 
SheWolf said:
In medical practice parents also have the right to pull the plug and refuse medical care for their children. Is that another form of slavery?
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You're analogy is nonsense. Parents do not have the right to refuse medical care to a child who is not dying or who is not, in effect, brain dead and beyond recovery.

Parents have a legal responsibility to provide care to their children at the risk of having them removed from the parents' care. If a child required a heart operation, if a parent denied that care the child would be taken from the parent and given the necessary care.
 
JayDubya said:
If you were interested in biological reality you wouldn't compare natural mammalian reproduction to parasitism appropriate of nothing.
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Just because it's natural doesn't mean that it's morally good. What else do you call an organism that survives solely through the forcible extraction of nutrients from another organism's metabolic processes? It's an absolutely appropriate comparison that you are only dismissing because you are trying to justify an irrational and inhumane moral stance that denies human rights to half of humanity.

JayDubya said:
If you were interested in opposing slavery you wouldn't support the law considering living human beings to be subhuman property.
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They're not property because they cannot be bought and sold. They can be killed because they are not members of society, but they cannot legally or morally be exploited.
 
CanadaJohn said:
I'm glad you chimed in - I'd hoped you would, and I expected you'd have just this reaction. I don't believe the woman pushed for the murder charge, it was the same state prosecutor who decided to jump in on the Trevon Martin case and up the charges to murder. It seems to me, as you've said, the defense in this matter has to be that the fetus is not a person, therefore, there is no murder. If the prosecution tries this as a first degree murder they have to convince the jury that the fetus is a person and then this becomes a case that will go all the way to the Supreme Court and could be a vehicle for having Roe v Wade narrowed.

The two legal positions cannot continue to stand together - they are not consistent.
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Well, I am nothing if not consistent. I'm actually glad I'm pretty predictable in this respect.

Creating an inconsistent set of codes that can't stand together was always the point. And they're using this woman -- essentially saying it's ok if she gets no justice -- as a vehicle to help get them another mile down the road of forcing these codes into conflict.

A lot of anti-choice people keep trying to tell me they consider the woman an equal or better to a ZEF, but things like this are the reason I don't believe them.
 
Viktyr Gehrig said:
I can compare the abortion issue to slavery as well, with pregnant women being forced into involuntary servitude to produce offspring for people who contribute nothing to the process.
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Your argument fails when you realize except in very rare cases the woman wasn't forced to get pregnant. There are consequences to personal actions/choices.
 
CanadaJohn said:
You're analogy is nonsense. Parents do not have the right to refuse medical care to a child who is not dying or who is not, in effect, brain dead and beyond recovery.

Parents have a legal responsibility to provide care to their children at the risk of having them removed from the parents' care. If a child required a heart operation, if a parent denied that care the child would be taken from the parent and given the necessary care.
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Yes, they do, actually. As long as they're religious. This has been a big point of friction over the years with Christian Scientists who believe prayer will heal their sick children. They wind up dying of simple, treatable illnesses like ear infections. And the doctors can't report if they never see the children, obviously.

Yes, there is a voluntary reporting system if you intend to deny your child medical care, but obviously no one actually uses that.
 
SmokeAndMirrors said:
Well, I am nothing if not consistent. I'm actually glad I'm pretty predictable in this respect.

Creating an inconsistent set of codes that can't stand together was always the point. And they're using this woman -- essentially saying it's ok if she gets no justice -- as a vehicle to help get them another mile down the road of forcing these codes into conflict.

A lot of anti-choice people keep trying to tell me they consider the woman an equal or better to a ZEF, but things like this are the reason I don't believe them.
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The real complicator in this matter, from my perspective, is that the man ended this pregnancy in the same manner that the woman could have ended the pregnancy herself, had she choosen to do so. It calls into question why a woman could "murder" and creates two classes of people. I don't know the medical complications that can possibly occur if such a drug is administered even if the woman knows. I guess it's possible that any drug could be deadly. In that regard, I think a charge of attempted murder or attempted manslaughter may have been more appropriate if there is medical research that would support the pill could be harmful in some circumstances.
 
CanadaJohn said:
You're analogy is nonsense. Parents do not have the right to refuse medical care to a child who is not dying or who is not, in effect, brain dead and beyond recovery.

Parents have a legal responsibility to provide care to their children at the risk of having them removed from the parents' care. If a child required a heart operation, if a parent denied that care the child would be taken from the parent and given the necessary care.
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That is not true. A parent can refuse to give consent to any procedure, even if that means the child will die, if the procedure is "invasive" or "intrusive"
 
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