Unborn Victims of Violence Act
Laci and Conner's Law
An except...
My question is how anyone could have a problem with this bill. It specifically exempts abortion and obviously seeks to maximize the ability to prosecute those who have severely beaten or possibly killed women.
Yet it still only got 61 votes in the Senate.
Is the anti-abortion paranoia justified?
Two cents please...
Nick
An except...
Quote:
The bill, also known as "Laci and Conner's Law" after California murder victim Laci Petersen and her unborn son, had widespread public support: over 80 percent of Americans agree that if a pregnant woman is murdered or loses the child as a result of an assault, prosecutors should be able to bring separate murder charges for the death of the fetus.
When women's rights and prochoice groups opposed the law on the grounds that it would undermine the right to abortion (even though abortion is specifically exempted by the bill), their stance not only came across as callous but made them look like extreme ideological zealots.
The bill, also known as "Laci and Conner's Law" after California murder victim Laci Petersen and her unborn son, had widespread public support: over 80 percent of Americans agree that if a pregnant woman is murdered or loses the child as a result of an assault, prosecutors should be able to bring separate murder charges for the death of the fetus.
When women's rights and prochoice groups opposed the law on the grounds that it would undermine the right to abortion (even though abortion is specifically exempted by the bill), their stance not only came across as callous but made them look like extreme ideological zealots.
My question is how anyone could have a problem with this bill. It specifically exempts abortion and obviously seeks to maximize the ability to prosecute those who have severely beaten or possibly killed women.
Yet it still only got 61 votes in the Senate.
Is the anti-abortion paranoia justified?
Two cents please...
Nick
Comments
Originally posted by Ganondorf
This makes me want to hit a pregnant woman in the uterus with a sledge hammer.
Nice.
Normally off hand garbage comments don't bother me. But when I have a 32 week pregnant wife at home that kinda shit rubs me the wrong way. Ya know that hole you put pie in? Shut it.
My question is how anyone could have a problem with this bill. It specifically exempts abortion and obviously seeks to maximize the ability to prosecute those who have severely beaten or possibly killed women.
What is: "because they are clueless".
Slavery---human beings only worth a fraction of others, women forced to endure castration, factory farms with animals kept in cages so small that they can't turn around, and now finally unborn kids get protection from one form of murder.
It's a good thing.
Originally posted by dmz
Slavery---human beings only worth a fraction of others, women forced to endure castration, factory farms with animals kept in cages so small that they can't turn around, and now finally unborn kids get protection from one form of murder.
Originally posted by Ganondorf
This makes me want to hit a pregnant woman in the uterus with a sledge hammer.
Just watch that one fly under the mod radar. Whoosh, see there it goes.
I'm not getting into this argument but I would say the pro-choice groups concerns would be based around the possibility that this would strengthen the argument of pro-lifers that abortion is murder opening up the possibility of future revision of abortion laws.
Originally posted by trumptman
My question is how anyone could have a problem with this bill.
That's a very good question- and one I intend to answer shortly. It seems that women's rights organizations are dead-set against the bill. So I'm inclined to agree with them at this point. We'll see.
People are against this law because:
1) There is no guarantee that a fetus will become a living breathing human. Giving something that may not even develope rights is seen by some as an attempt by anti-abortionists to end the murder.
2) Not all religions or culturs are against abortion, or even feel that a fetus is a human until it is born.
3) If a murder is commited and the woman was 2 weeks pregnent and didn't know about it what's the guarantee she wouldn't have gotten an abortion before the fetus was born.
Three reasons off the top of my head which boil down to there is no guarantee a fetus will become a human baby to begin with so trying someone for the crime of murdering what may never be a baby is a stretch to some. Also, the anti-abortionists are trying to prevent any rights from being bestowed onto a fetus because as soon as a fetus gets rights then we have begun down the road to ending abortion.
Originally posted by Ganondorf
This makes me want to hit a pregnant woman in the uterus with a sledge hammer.
In the words of Brad Dupree (Kevin Spacey's boss) in American Beauty:
"Man, you are one twisted fsck. "
I hope a tree falls on you. So there.
Refusing to recognize a full-term unborn baby as a person is an extreme position that flies in the face of reality. But "Laci and Conner's Law" goes to the opposite extreme, recognizing the fetus as a person throughout the pregnancy and, at least in theory, enshrining the notion that life begins at conception.
The prochoice movement might have been able to avoid this debacle with a compromise solution: a bill recognizing the unborn child as a homicide victim after viability. (That, incidentally, is the law in Massachusetts; only 16 states make fetal homicide a crime from conception.)
That fetal homicide exists is indisputable...when an act of violence ceases to be an attack on a woman and becomes an attack on a woman and her unborn child is in question.
It'll be like Galager. But with a fetus.
Everyone's invited.
This makes me want to hit a pregnant woman in the uterus with a sledge hammer.
This, on the other hand, makes me want to hit Ganondorf with a sledge hammer.
Originally posted by Ganondorf
This makes me want to hit a pregnant woman in the uterus with a sledge hammer.
This makes me want to hit you with the ban hammer.
I'm obviously not against twisted humor... but jesus christ, man. Grow the hell up.
Originally posted by Stoo
This, on the other hand, makes me want to hit Ganondorf with a sledge hammer.
Be my guest.
Originally posted by murbot
This makes me want to hit you with the ban hammer.
Go for it.