[BowStreetRunner]

......
disclaimers: not trying to start an abortion debate, and not saying this article is definitely true, but if it is, im annoyed!


Basically some lady from the National Organization for Women says that Scott Peterson shouldnt be charged with double murder because his child was unborn.....charging him with double murder is perfectly within Kalifornia statutes however


Article (http://www.dailyrecord.com/news/03/04/20/news3-laci.htm)

BSR

[Pendragon]

Why is it infuriating?

If anything, it is just being consistent.

I certainly do not agree with NOW, but the CA law is just stupid.

How is it murder to kill a 7mo fetus, but legal to abort it?

Thats their whole point and I would imagine that they are worried that a conviction in a case like this will affect precident.

Also, I think they are sending a message to their liberal buddies - this law is just a tool to allow them to invoke special circumstances and then say they are "seeking the death penalty".

That is also a joke - we have way more major earthquakes than executions here - I am not sure if they even do 1 per year - but its in that range.

[Don Gwinn]

The local "reasonable" liberals say the law is perfectly consistent. You get charged with murder because you "kill the child against the mother's will," but you aren't charged with murder if you "terminate the pregnancy with her consent." (Yes, those are the precise terms they use for each act--see the reasoning?)

Personally, I can't buy that. What they're really saying is that it's all up to the mother and if she doesn't consent, it's murder. The fact that you kill the fetus/baby has nothing to do with it unless the mother objects. But murder is not destruction of property. If a fetus/baby is simply the property of the mother and that's why you can't destroy it unless she wants you to, then murder is wildly inappropriate as a charge for that crime.

"Murder" is a crime in which you take the life of a person. Not from his mother, his wife, or his government, but from the one you murdered. If I am murdered tomorrow, the prosecutor may talk about my bereaved mother or my wife, but they're not the reason for the murder charge. The reason for the murder charge is that my life was taken from me. Compare this to the old law on killing slaves, who, like fetuses today, were considered the property of their owners. Very few places considered it murder to kill a slave; generally you would be required to pay a fine to the owner to compensate him for the loss of his property.

If you're going to charge someone with murder for killing an unborn child, then you really are stating de facto and de jure that you believe the unborn child has its own life which it owns the same way an adult or a child would. That is inconsistent with the use of abortion as birth control.

No matter which side of the abortion debate you're on, the cognitive dissonance is there.

[BowStreetRunner]

you are sure right there is cognitive dissonance
and Pendragon, you are right, it is consistent, so i guess i should expect it.....oh well
BSR