This headline on CNN made me do quite the doubletake and it took me actually opening up the link to understand what the hell they were talking about. Honestly at first it flashed across my mind that pro-lifers would be able to kill a pregnant woman to stop her from having an abortion. Yeah, completely ridiculous, but thats where my brain went with that first thing in the morning. Though to be fair, that sort of ass-backwards logic is their MO.
I am not sure what all to say about this proposed bill, there are a lot of issues here. The first of course being that any time a state tries to designate a fetus as a person it puts you on a slippery slope that ends in them saying if you can kill to protect, then abortion would be murder.
Then on the other hand women should be able to protect themselves, pregnant or not, which makes you wonder why they didn't look at this incident and think, hmm, how can we prevent domestic violence as to avoid this sort of situation to begin with? I am certainly not saying stabbing someone is ok, I am including that in the domestic violence category as well. All around this bill just makes me shake my head and go, really? Thats where you went with that?
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Bill would let women kill to save unborn.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/12879
Well it says in the article that "moms-to-be should be allowed to use lethal force if necessary in order to protect their unborn children against an attacker"...But hell, shouldn't anyone be allowed to use whatever force necessary in a life and death situation in order to protect themselves when it's THEIR OWN LIFE BEING THREATENED??? Or what about if it's a mom trying to protect her ALREADY BORN children from an attacker???
It seems that part of the message here is that unborn lives matter more than fully formed already born human lives...and that's f-ed up!
I'm actually ok with the effect of this law. I just wish they'd framed it some other way than giving rights to the fetus. Like saying that causing a miscarriage is grave harm to the mother more than just bruising would be, and thus she's allowed to use more force to defend herself.
That should be that an *unwanted* miscarriage causes grave harm to the mother, obviously.
I'm confused... how many people are trying to kill fetuses and who is able to kill the fetus without harming the mother? Isn't the mom-to-be technically already allowed to do this because she has a right to defend HERSELF? The woman who got punched was trying to protect HERSELF along with her fetuses, wasn't she? I mean, who attacks fetuses without intent of hurting the mother - physically or psychologically?
I'm guessing the problem is that you're only allowed to defend yourself with "appropriate" force. There are specific situations where you're allowed to use lethal force; otherwise you're only supposed to fight back at a lower level and try to get away. In general if someone hits you you aren't allowed to shoot them in the head; you're supposed to just hit them back and/or run away. But if someone is trying to stab you with a knife and kill you, you're allowed to stab them in self defense.
The idea is probably that by punching her in the stomach he wasn't trying to kill her; so she isn't allowed to kill him.
However, I think you could make the argument that punching someone hard in the stomach could be lethal (especially if they already have delicate health for some other reason like carrying quadruplets). Isn't that how Houdini died? So I think she had a right to defend herself, possibly even using lethal force. The question is, *could* she have defended herself in a non-lethal way and/or gotten away? I don't know enough of the details but unless they can show that she had another clearly safer option, I think she should have been allowed to defend herself.
You're not required to fight back at a lower level. You are required to fight back in a proportionate manner given the perceived threat, proportionate can still be higher.
This new law seems entirely unnecessary. According to Oklahoma law:
"A person is justified in using deadly force in self-defense if that person reasonably believed that use of deadly force was necessary to protect himself/herself from imminent danger of death or great bodily harm. Self-defense is a defense although the danger to life or personal security may not have been real, if a reasonable person, in the circumstances and from the viewpoint of the defendant, would reasonably have believed that he/she was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm."
If forcibly inflicting a miscarriage on someone can reasonably be defined as "great bodily harm" (and I think most people would argue that it can), then the situation seems to be covered by previously existing law.
Here's a copy of the bill in question: Senate Bill 1103 - Use of Force For the Protection of the Unborn Act
Yeah, that's how I would look at it. Don't make a new law, but make sure that a *forced* miscarriage counts as grave bodily harm.
The woman was charged with manslaughter....... Even though she was already protected under the CURRENT law......so, where the hell is her lawyer and why the hell do they need to extend FURTHER laws to protect when the current laws are good enough,they just need to be upheld?
Oh that's right, because the babies died and the man died...the only one that came out alive was the woman.
So SOMEONE had to do jail time. Bet you anything had she lost those babies, and had she not killed the bastard, she still would have been looked at as a shitty mother-to-be. Why the hell didn't she do enough? Then there would have been a new law stating "if a woman doesn't actively try to defend her unborn babies in an attack, she can be charged with manslaughter"..
I'm extremely cynical and jaded when it comes to equality and how women are treated in the judicial system. Especially in places like Oklahoma.
It's so simple, yet so complicated.
I think the mother has a right to defend herself. A fetus is a part of herself. Like if somebody cut your arm off and you didn't want it to be cut off, that's illegal. If you cut your own arm off, because it's YOUR arm, why would it be illegal?