Topic: Abortion
Quote: To equate miscarriage with manslaughter is preposterous.
Response: Well not to the pro-life league.\nRemember the Unborn Victims of Violence Act passed by the senate after laci peterson? or as they call it, conners law?\nThe UVVA creates a federal law making it a crime to cause harm to a "child in utero," recognizing everything from a zygote to a fetus as an independent "victim," with legal rights distinct from the woman who has been attacked.\n"More than 30 states already have similar laws on the books. In practice, these laws treat the pregnant woman as little more than collateral damage in an attack portrayed to the public as one directed against the fetus."\nSee, this law has nothing to do with prosecuting criminals who attack pregnant woman, it is about turning pregnant women into criminals.\nWhy do i say that? Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women sums it up quite well:\n*In 1984, South Carolina\'s Supreme Court created a state feticide law in a case where a man viciously stabbed his pregnant girlfriend, causing her, among other things, to lose her pregnancy. In 1997, South Carolina used this law against a pregnant woman, Cornelia Whitner, who was charged with failing "to provide proper medical care for her unborn child." Whitner had given birth to a healthy baby who tested positive for an illegal drug. Based on extrapolation of the state feticide law, Ms. Whitner was convicted of criminal child abuse. At sentencing Ms. Whitner begged for drug treatment. The judge responded, "I think I\'ll just let her go to jail."\n*Regina McKnight was an indigent 22-year-old woman with a drug problem. She became pregnant and despite her problems had every hope of carrying her pregnancy to term, but the pregnancy ended in stillbirth. The hospital reacted not by offering her counseling or drug treatment, but rather by helping build a criminal case against her. Eventually she was convicted of murder.\nThe South Carolina Medical Association and other leading health groups concluded that there was no evidence that McKnight\'s drug use caused the stillbirth. Moreover, no one in this case, not even the prosecution, believed that McKnight had any intention of harming the fetus or losing the pregnancy. Had McKnight intentionally sought to end her pregnancy by having an illegal third trimester abortion, her sentence would have been two years in jail -- but because of a law similar to the bill President Bush just signed, she is today serving a 12-year sentence.\nread more here \nanother good article on the matter:\nDo pregnant woman have rights?\n*In 1984, for example, a Nigerian woman pregnant and hospitalized in Chicago was forced to have a C-section. She refused the surgery because she planned to return to Nigeria where she would be unable to access C-sections for future births. The hospital obtained a court order and forced her to undergo the procedure. Hospital staff tied her down with leather wrist and ankle cuffs while she screamed for help.\n*Another hospital obtained a court order to force a pregnant woman to undergo a blood transfusion. Doctors "yelled at and forcibly restrained, overpowered and sedated" the woman in order to carry out the order.\n*In Washington, DC, doctors sought a court order to force Ayesha Madyun to have a C-section. The doctors asserted that the fetus faced a 50-75 percent chance of infection if not delivered surgically. The court, apparently viewing the pregnant woman as having no more rights than a slab of meat, said, "[a]ll that stood between the Madyun fetus and its independent existence, separate from its mother, was put simply, a doctor\'s scalpel." With that, the court granted the order and the scalpel sliced through Ms. Madyun\'s flesh, the muscles of her abdominal wall, and her uterus. When the procedure was done, there was no evidence of infection.\n*Angela Carder at 27 years old and 25 weeks pregnant became critically ill. She, her family and her attending physicians all agreed on treatment designed to keep her alive for as long as possible. The hospital however called an emergency hearing to determine the rights of the fetus. Despite testimony that a Cesarean section could kill Ms. Carder, the court ordered the surgery because the fetus had independent legal rights. As a result, Ms. Carder not only lost her right to informed consent and bodily integrity; she lost her life. The surgery resulted in the death of both Angela and her fetus.\n"All of these women were denied the right to bodily integrity and physical liberty and their fetuses were granted more rights than any legal person under law."\nThat line just about sums it up. These laws aren\'t about saving the unborn, and neither is the pro-life movement. It is about controlling and punishing pregnant woman. It is about taking rights away from the woman the moment of conception..as if she no longer exists. These people would not think twice about prosecuting a pregnant woman whos pregnancy results in misscarriage...intentional, accidental, whatever.
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