[tyme]

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:s.00146:

This is a brilliant piece of legislation that would make murder, even without any knowledge of pregnancy, of even a 1st-term fetus unknown even to the mother, a crime equivalent to the same crime against the mother. The death penalty is specifically excluded as a punishment for any such crime against a fetus.

Notably excepted are abortions, and in fact any act by the mother herself is exempt. At least they included provisions exempting any who provide medical treatment to the mother and provided exemption for abortion (either by choice or by the mother's choice or because of medical necessity).

Just considering the offense of murder or attempted murder, this legislation would make women a protected class of citizen that would, in essence, threaten to double the punishment to any offender who commits a violent act upon a woman, if by chance she happens to be pregnant.

I'm not one to suggest that murder and attempted murder should have any upper bound on punishment, but is this really the direction we want to go as a society? I'm also completely ignoring potential political impact on abortion law if this law is passed and upheld by the courts.

[TarpleyG]

In tyme, they will have the noose all the way tightened...

GT

[redhead]

I didn't read it, just skimmed the text. But I've got to ask: why Federal legislation? I don't believe this is an area where Federal law ought to be treading. It seems similar to me to the "Violence against Women Act", which, if memory serves, was found to be unconstitutional, because the federal gov. had no authority to enact such legislation. It is state jurisdiction. The Congress tried to justify it by invoking the "Interestate Commerce" clause. You know - women are more subject to violence against them than men are, so they are afraid to travel, which affects their jobs and employability, and so affects interestate commerce. Kind of a stretch. This sounds like the same sort of thing. Congress also tried this with the 1000 foot gun-free limit around school zones, using "Interstate Commerce" as a justification. That didn't fly with the supremes, either.

If Congress keeps up this trend of making everything a federal crime, we won't need state governments and law enforcement anymore.

[Feanaro]

Why not simply hike up the regular murder sentance?

[Gray Peterson]

Like the federal cloning ban, like the federal ban on late term abortions, this law has no constitutional authority to be passed.

[tyme]

It doesn't just cover murder. It covers any sort of violence that results in injury or "death" of the fetus, regardless of any injury or lack of injury to the mother.

The list of 50-odd crimes that this bill makes apply to a fetus isn't really that interesting. They basically combed the books looking for every crime that the feds have managed to acquire jurisdiction over and which could possibly involve injury or violence to a fetus. These types of things might end up resulting in murder charges:

Feinstein is 3 weeks pregnant (okay, don't throw up), some militant group shoots her in the foot and she miscarries.

Someone removes a flamability warning placard from the back of a tanker truck, Sen. Feinstein is following too closely and it stops suddenly; she gets hurt, baby dies. (courtesy of 18USC1365)

18USC1513 might even make this murder: Some creep commits a serious crime against you; female friend of his, 3 weeks pregnant, is getting ready to lie on the witness stand, so you punch her. Baby dies.

Tree huggers are out in force. One distracts a tractor driver, and he runs over a pregnant woman. I believe the tree hugger who distracted the driver is up for double homicide. (18USC1864)

BATFE-troop decides to raid your house due to a CI tip from a burglar that you have a folding stock on a post-ban AW. You shoot one agent in the vest before you're arrested. Unfortunately, the agent was a woman and she was pregnant. The baby dies. (18USC2231)

Most interesting, though, is 2340(A), which is the (extra-national) torture statute. Is it philosophically possible to torture a first or even a second-term fetus? It's nice to see the Religicrats in Washington totally ignoring such issues.

[David Scott]

This bill is a "stalking horse", intended to establish a legal precedent that an unborn fetus is a separate and distinct legal person. That notion will support future efforts to ban abortion.

[Standing Wolf]

It isn't a federal issue.

This may well be a stalking horse, but that doesn't make it right.

[rock jock]

This bill is a "stalking horse", intended to establish a legal precedent that an unborn fetus is a separate and distinct legal person. That notion will support future efforts to ban abortion.
Yeah, remember what happened 140 years ago when they decided blacks were people? They ended up banning slavery. Horrors.

[antsi]

There are a lot of challenging "what-ifs" you can play out with the scenario of harm to a fetus or embryo, and not all of them support a strict pro-life position (nor the opposite position).

1) You punch a woman in the belly, causing trauma and bleeding to her internal organs. She isn't pregnant. She heals up fine, suffering no long term physical consequences.

2) You punch a pregnant woman in the belly, causing her to miscarry.

To me, in scenario 2), you have certainly caused a greater harm to the woman than you did in scenario 1). If she's my wife and that's my baby, then I consider this to be a very big deal.

How about this one?

3) You knew she was pregnant, and you hit her in the belly in a deliberate attempt to cause a miscarriage. She doesn't miscarry, but she does have a placental abruption and starts to bleed heavily. She goes to the hospital, where she is delivered by emergency c-section. Mom heals up fine, suffering no long term physical consequences. The baby survives, but with permanent brain damage due to the interruption of placental perfusion.

To me, in case 3), you are much more culpable - to both the mom and the baby - and deserve greater punishment than you did in case 1).

As far as 2) versus 3), I don't know which one is worse.

4) You work in a medical lab. You pick up a urine sample and look at the label, and it's the name of a girl who dumped you for a smarter, better-looking guy. She's being tested for urinary tract infection. You dump the sample down the drain.

5) Same scenario, but it isn't her urine sample -- it's her embryos. She's trying to get pregnant by in vitro fertilization (the smarter, better-looking guy has a low sperm count, I guess). You dump her embryos down the drain.

Again, both 4) and 5) are immoral acts but 5) is a far greater offense against the woman than 4) is.

I would stop far short of equating 5) to murder, though. It's evil and wicked, and it is a lot worse than simple "desctruction of property," but it isn't the same as murdering her child, or even the same as a scenario like 3) where you did damage to her pregnancy and subsequently to her child. At least, that's my take on it.

There are plenty more -- you can do this all day long. For everyone's sake, I'll just do one more set of variations on a theme....

6) You strap a woman down against her will on an OR table and perform an unnecessary uterine curretage for the sole purpose of torturing her. You aspirate her endometrium, which grows back next month -- no permanent physical harm.

7) You do the same thing, except she's pregnant. You have performed a forced abortion. She didn't know she was pregnant, and you didn't know, either. But the pregnancy is discovered in the pathology lab, when the aspirate is examined.

8) She knew she was pregnant, and you did too.

9) You strapped her down against her will on an OR table, but instead of evacuating her uterus, you excised a non-malignant macule on her cheek. She considered it a "beauty mark," and didn't want it excised.

Again, 6) 7) 8) and 9) are all crimes, but I think there are different degrees of culpability here.

I don't know exactly how to summarize all this, except to say that it seems to me both sides in the political argument are oversimplifying the issue.

Saying that a fetus is just tissue in a woman's body, with no more moral consequence than a mole on her cheek, is obviously untenable in my view.

But then again, I can't see charging the IVF lab technician as a serial murderer if he puts a sampling of fertilized embryos in the incinerator.