I’m not too concerned that The Unborn Victims of Violence Act has passed.
Most of the pro-life arguments for this bill are nonsense; it would have been perfectly easy to pass a bill that punished criminals for harming fetuses without taking a stand on the abortion issue one way or the other. (Senator Feinstein offered an amendment to do just that, which was shot down 51-49). Instead, the Republicans chose to make fetal protection – something that both parties support – needlessly controversial by sticking in unnecessary pro-life language.
Nonetheless, there’s no need to panic. This is a pro-life victory, but it’s not one that matters much. And pro-choicers are probably better off having this faux-issue taken off the table.
Of course, not all feminists agree. Kate Michaelman of NARAL says “this is preparing for the day the Supreme Court has a majority that will overrule Roe v. Wade.” Similarly, Tena at Eschaton writes that “it takes another huge bite out of the right to choose, and is a set-up for the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade.”
Really, though, this bill doesn’t directly effect anyone’s right to choose. And if the Supreme Court does get a pro-life majority (something I discussed in this post), I’m sure they will use this law to help justify overturning Roe. But if this law hadn’t been passed, that same hypothetical pro-life Court would still overturn Roe – they’d just find some other justification.
Roe will live or die based on who is on the Supreme Court, not based on this bill..
I’d be more worried about its use as a wedge to justify further attmepts to impose expensive C-sections and further attempts to charge women with murder who’ve used drugs or alcohol anti-depressive meds or who exercised too much or ate improperly or who fell down a flight of stairs when they were pushed by an angry boyfriend or who just, you know, miscarried for no reason anyone can tell, but hey, it must be their fault, right?
But I’m paranoid, so don’t mind me.
Doesn’t the Unborn Victims of Violence Act only apply to a fetus killed during the commission of a federal crime?
That’s correct, Quad.
I hope you’re right, Amp, but I’m still worried. Partly for the reasons that —k says, and partly because one of the strongest arguments that a fetus is different from a person is that society has never treated a fetus as a person. We’ve never counted unborn children in the census, for instance, even when we counted slaves (the 3/5ths clause was about congressional representation, not about the census except insofar as the census was raw data), we don’t carve conception dates on our tombstones – and we don’t count it as two murders when a pregnant woman is killed. Except in that last case, now we do.
—k is right to be worried about miscarriages. Miscarriages are very common, and if they’re counted as infant deaths then our infant mortality rate, fairly low among born infants, is very high instead. Once we start pursuing criminal investigations into that area, there’ll be no end of it.
I’m also a little worried about the civil rights of criminal defendants. Not to make any excuse for people who punch or stab women in the stomach, but many pregnant women don’t look it, even in late stages if they’re stockily built, and to change an assault charge to a murder charge because of the death of a fetus whom the assailant didn’t know was there seems a wee bit questionable. Previously existing charges should be enough for these creeps.
Simon wrote: “…many pregnant women don’t look it, even in late stages…”
Do I see a renewed market for those “Baby on board” signs?
I dunno, Amp. Their rejection of Feinstein’s alternative, which focused on the woman, chills me. I agree with k.
Reproductive Rights is starting to be a misnomer. It should be Women’s Sovereignity Over Their Own Damn Bodies Rights.
I agree that this is not a big deal at all. In fact, for the pro-choice it is a good thing.
Abortion rights are based on the fact that a fetus is not a “person” as defined by the relevant Constitutional amendments. The fact that a fetus is defined as a “person” for some other reason will not affect the definition here.
Another law could define “person” to include the dead (for example, a law protecting the right to use a ‘person’s’ name could include the deceased so that Sam Adams’ name couldn’t be used to sell beer without the consent of his decendents.” That wouldn’t mean that the dead would suddenly acquire Constitutional rights under the 14th amendment. A rape law defining “person” to include people, cows, and sheep wouldn’t suddenly give sheep the right to vote.
Statutes can define words however they wish. It doesn’t change the meaning of the word anywhere else.
As a pro-choice person, I support choice on both sides — abortion and child birth. The killing of a fetus takes away a woman’s choice just as much as prohibiting abortion does, and should be punished.
Never, ever underestimate the ability of a prosecutor to make a federal case.
But again: I’m paranoid. Don’t mind me.
I think that the point of this law in the abortion debate is not in its immediate effects, but in the way bringing up the human rights of foetuses on a continual basis is hoped to affect public opinion, so that one day banning abortion will seem quite the natural thing to do.
It’s an attempt to affect the fence-sitters.
OTOH, it can also be seen as one of those things Bush can do for his fundamentalist, anti-woman base without seriously alienating other Republican voters. In that sense it’s just politics as usual, I guess.
But I’m getting more and more of aquaria dreams, you know the ones where you are an aquarium waiting for the goldfish to be brought in….
B
The issue of pregnant women not looking pregnant…
I think it is generally the case that criminals, or those who do others harm basically “take their victims as they are”. So, you can’t defend yourself of a murder after throwing someone down the stairs”, by saying “How was I to know they were so frail and the impact would kill them?”
You hold up a bank… hold a pregnant woman hostage, beat her up and she miscarries. With the new law, you would be guilty of a crime for an action you didn’t specifically plan in advance– but which you risked.
If instead instead, the woman had been a diabetic, who you’d kept from her food and medicine and she’d gone into shock and died, you’d be guilty of that. And, just as with the pregnant woman, you couldn’t forsee that your actions would result in that specific event. All you did was prevent her from having food for a couple of hours, right?
You wouldn’t have “known” by looking at her that she needed to manage her blood sugar.
The fact that a criminal can’t predict the amount of harm, or the specific harm their intentional illegal actions may cause, is not a huge problem from my point of view.
I know that some want this law because they believe it will advance the anti-abortion agenda. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
Lucia, you have a point.
But did you know that it’s been hypothesized (at least) that the main reason the murder rate has declined in recent years is better medical care for assault victims?
If two people stab or shoot one victim each, in exactly the same potentially fatal way, and due to the chances of available medical care one victim lives and one dies, one criminal will be charged with murder and the other won’t. I find something vaguely bothersome about that. It’s the same something vaguely bothersome I find about differential treatment of assault on women who are (but don’t look it) and aren’t pregnant.
Concerning the diabetic kidnap victim, I believe that, when kidnap victims need special medical treatment, the law tends to press stronger charges against the criminals when it can be shown that they knew this. This adds callousness to their other crimes.
I think something similar can be sad about assault on people who look, as well as are, frail.
In general it is perhaps wise to rate criminal penalties against the intent, callousness, or carelessness of the criminal more than against the purely incidental outcome of the crime.
This is what we do with drunk drivers, who are severely prosecuted even if they don’t hit anybody.
I have no difficulties with the idea that the penalties are higher when callousness is added to a crime.
However, I don’t see how that means the “less intentional” act should become, automaticaly, a “non-crime”.
Oh… and we punish drunk drivers even *more* if they hit someone while driving drunk…..
You may be underestimating the impact of this. Suppose (god forbid) Roe is overturned. That does not automatically make abortion a crime. What it does it put the battle back into the states – some of which will criminalize abortion, some of which won’t. A horrible things, but leaving us two battlegrounds – getting abortion rights into national law, and also fighting at the state level.
This law, in spite of the intent, may change that. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, all abortion may immediately become prosecutable under this law, regardless of state law. Against the clear languageand intent of the bill you say? As someone said above, never underestimate the ability of a prosecutor to twist the law, nor (I add) the ability of sympathetic judges to abet them.
Lucia wrote, “I don’t see how that means the “less intentional” act should become, automaticaly, a “non-crime”.”
It’s not a non-crime. Assaulting someone hard enough to kill a fetus if there’s one there is crime enough, even if there is no fetus there. Even if the victim is male.
Lucia wrote, “and we punish drunk drivers even *more* if they hit someone while driving drunk.”
Sure, but we punish them severely even if they don’t. It’s not a “non-crime.”
First, I think I need to clarify, I am not a supporter of the Unborn children act. Although, I was unware that the law prevented crimimals from being charged with assault? .
My objection was to Simon’s suggestion, that the law somehow violates a criminal’s civil rights by penalize them for causing the harm of miscarriage because they were unaware the woman was pregnant! .
I also object to the idea that we cannot make the harm of miscarriage a crime simply because assault (and presumably battery) is already a crime.
Inducing miscarraige is a harm, and I see no reason why causing this specific harm cannot be made a criminal. I hold the same opinion for maiming someone, crippling them or killiing them. There is nothing wrong with making it illegal to killl someone in addittion to assaulting them. (Or possibly as a consquence of assaulting them.)
Earlier, Simon’s objection seemed to be that the criminal might not know that the victim was pregnant. However, there are many other laws which hold people liable for causing harn– even if the victim didn’t not “seem” to be particularly fragile, and yet they died after being assaulted.
So, I don’t object to the law on that particular ground.
Now, Simon’s seems to the object to making inducing miscarraige a crime, because we can already charge people with assault.
Of course we can do so. With or without the unborn children act, people who commit assault, battery, murder, bank robbery , or any other crime can be charged with those crimes.
But what of it? We can charge people who commit murder with attempted murder. Few would see that as a reason to vitiate laws against murder.
We can only charge people with the “crime” of inducing miscarraige if we make “it”, the specific harm of inducing miscarraige, a crime in an of itself.
In my drunk driving analogy , reckless homocide is the “it” which we make illegal even though we also penalizeing drunk driving.
Although, maybe I am mistaken, and you believe we should stop charging drunk drivers with reckless manslaughter, since we already charge them with drunk driving? Or because the drunk didn’t notice the pedestrian before running them down?
Or you can explain why one can charge the drunk driver with reckless homocide, yet consider it inherently unjust to charge someone guilty of assault with an additional physical harm, like maiming, miscarraige or death?
I see no logical way to object to making inducing miscarriage a crime other than to simply say one thinks it should be one.
As to my personal opinion of that specifically:
I think inducing miscarriage should be a crime independent of assault. It is a serious harm to the mother and father of fetus. Certainly, it is a harm at least as severe as damaging someone’s property or stealing their goods.
I do not consider it exactly the same as murder.