As a morally repugnant response to your query: in Canada, there is no controlling law regarding abortion. Zero. Zip. Our Supreme Court struck down our abortion law as unconstitutional in 1988 and Parliament failed in its one attempt to pass a new law to replace it a year or two later (it deadlocked in the Senate).
As a consequence, a fetus has absolutely no status in Canadian law. It isn't recognized, it has no voice, no standing, nothing. Your scenario, where a 9-month pregnant woman is assaulted and the fetus dies? It results in exactly your outcome. Assault against the woman, probably aggravated assault, but the fetus is a legal nullity. No charge can be brought regarding its terrible fate.
From time to time, backbenchers in the Conservative party have attempted to introduce bills that would address this by allowing such a charge to be filed. At every attempt it is shouted down by the left as a dangerous and unacceptable intrusion upon a woman's sacrosanct right to abortion on demand. Conservative party leaders and hopefuls must, upon demand of the left and of the press, vow never to introduce legislation regarding abortion. If they do not they are savagely attacked by those same actors.
Canada is utterly unable to acknowledge that our legal stance on abortion makes us an extreme outlier in democratic societies. Such is life in the great progressive north.
As an interesting aside, when I.M. says "shouted down" I think he means literally. In our congressional hearings there is no "shouting". In Canada they shout at one another almost, or certainly raise their voice. Also, In Canada, apparently heckling from non-MP's is allowed, but the Speaker of the Parliament (is he or she called something different there?) acted almost like a referee and when the heckling got to loud they put a stop to it. I found watching Parliament interesting recently.
You're not wrong in that heckling is a fairly common occurrence in Westminster style parliamentary democracies, but in this case I was using it figuratively. Abortion is a third rail of Canadian politics, at least for the right. Any attempt to touch it leads to howls of outrage from our elites, our media, etc. that the right to an abortion is sacrosanct and how dare any Conservative propose a measure that might just be a stalking horse to taking away or even putting the slightest of limits upon that right.
Every Conservative leader has to go through the performance of vowing that he will not allow any legislation concerning abortion to be introduced were he to become prime minister. The language he uses must be unambiguously clear else he is accused of harboring a hidden agenda. Such is the Canadian left and Canadian culture, which is predominantly left. We almost make California look sane.
Our new Supreme Court "justice" cannot define a woman. If she, a woman, cannot define a woman, how can she define the legal status of the unborn?
In the states, it really doesn't matter what the people think. All that matters is pandering to the minority and advancing the progressive opinion. For example, there have been elections banning gay marriage that have been overturned. So really, the people have no say in any of this.
Finally, there are two states that are moving to essentailly make murder legal up to 28 days after birth. It is framed under "pregnancy complications." Not sure how you can have "pregnancy complications" after a child is born, but what do I know?
Your thought experiment is a bad approach because the underlying premise is that moral judgments and legal standards should be determined by subjective reactions rather than objective realities. Trying to define a person by considering our feelings about whether the baby is "alive enough" is part of how we got into this abortion morass in the first place. Yes, we should agree on a definition of a person, but not according to how we feel about babies in the womb. Objective, not subjective.
Courts have already routinely been deciding these issues. Roe may be in jeopardy, but there have always been pregnant women dying under different tragic circumstances.
indeed, and this provides something of a window into out societal mores, but, and this is a non-trivial but, the question of "is this a thing we should leave to courts to decide?" remains.
It was decided judicially because some people did not like unfavorable political outcomes. Others did not like that there were different political outcomes in different jurisdictions. Some people also figured that if the Court settled it, it would be settled for all time. How poorly they anticipated the near non-stop wrangling -- legal and extralegal -- that followed for nearly a half-century.
Never mind the extreme politicization of the courts. Not that that began with Roe, but Roe certainly cast a long shadow.
The courts are (or are supposed to be) deciding these cases based on statues in the case of criminal matters or prior decisions in that state in the case of tort claims. And btw that means these matters are often decided by jury.
I'm not sure how many state statutes speak to crimes involving babies in the womb, but what's your point? Should we revisit all those decisions to criticize them? Or to learn from them and see their consequences? And do you really think this is an area where, if we aren't legislating, we need to start doing so? Maybe, but maybe not.
my point is that if we establish a specific point at which an embryo becomes a person and therefore possesses right, that all this patchwork ambiguity ceases and that we can bring all such laws into alignment with when a woman has a right to terminate a pregnancy as a function of her self determination and when such a right is superseded by another person's right not to be killed and the care owed to a child by a parent.
it is true that many places in the US, if a pregnant woman and her unborn child die, there are TWO counts of manslaughter brought on the perpetrator. So IF our law can prosecute for that , doesn't it mean that they acknowledge that the baby is alive, and not just cells, but a living human being. If a baby has a heart beat it is a living being. I hope the courts will stop acting like this isn't true.
No one questions that the fetus is alive. That is not the point. And it is called a fetus, not a baby. Please don't use language in a deliberatively misleading way.
Ill call it as I see it, its a baby. It has a heartbeat, it can survive outside the womb long before 40 weeks gestation. You are trying to distract from the fact that a baby is a living thing. THAT is your issue, but I don't have to agree with you. Killing a living baby is murder, not sure how you can argue that point, but you are free to think what you want.
Using abortion as contraception is LAZY... again free country, you think as you wish, but thanks for playing.
No, what reversing Roe v Wade is doing is putting out back in the states hands. Why is that so hard for you to admit? Also wondering why you think it's OK to kill a baby???? It's a free country in that we all get to vote on how this all goes down. Killing babies is wrong, if you don't want to have this be an issue don't get pregnant, and assume you can use abortion as birth control. Stop whining and watch what happens. You don't even know if scotus will follow through. If you don't like that murder is wrong, that's your problem. you're free to go else where, take your pussy hat with you as you leave.
This is an excellent point. In the past the law has come down on the side of whether or not there is a positive expectation of a child. In other words, the fetus has status through the mother. You are right that this is a conversation we need to have so that we have codified in law whether the fetus itself has personhood separate from the expectations of the mother.
here's a useful thought experiment:
a woman is 9 month pregnant.
she is attacked, struck repeatedly in the abdomen and the unborn is lost as dead tissue.
is this to be treated as simple assault and battery just as such an attack would be treated against a man or a non-pregnant woman?
are we to grant the unborn no rights in this scenario nor attach additional penalties to this act? (because it lacks legal personhood)
because i suspect that to do so would grievously offend most people's sense of justice and morality.
now take that slider back 2 weeks to 8.5 months pregnant.
is it any different?
8 months?
otoh, if you're in a car accident and hit a woman who is 5 weeks pregnant and she miscarries, should that be manslaughter?
perhaps these issues start to help up zero in on just how we can define this for all occasions.
it seems to me that we need a general case answer, not a patchwork of tactical fixes.
we're going to have to grasp the nettle and create a knowable legal definition of "person" to do that.
As a morally repugnant response to your query: in Canada, there is no controlling law regarding abortion. Zero. Zip. Our Supreme Court struck down our abortion law as unconstitutional in 1988 and Parliament failed in its one attempt to pass a new law to replace it a year or two later (it deadlocked in the Senate).
As a consequence, a fetus has absolutely no status in Canadian law. It isn't recognized, it has no voice, no standing, nothing. Your scenario, where a 9-month pregnant woman is assaulted and the fetus dies? It results in exactly your outcome. Assault against the woman, probably aggravated assault, but the fetus is a legal nullity. No charge can be brought regarding its terrible fate.
From time to time, backbenchers in the Conservative party have attempted to introduce bills that would address this by allowing such a charge to be filed. At every attempt it is shouted down by the left as a dangerous and unacceptable intrusion upon a woman's sacrosanct right to abortion on demand. Conservative party leaders and hopefuls must, upon demand of the left and of the press, vow never to introduce legislation regarding abortion. If they do not they are savagely attacked by those same actors.
Canada is utterly unable to acknowledge that our legal stance on abortion makes us an extreme outlier in democratic societies. Such is life in the great progressive north.
As an interesting aside, when I.M. says "shouted down" I think he means literally. In our congressional hearings there is no "shouting". In Canada they shout at one another almost, or certainly raise their voice. Also, In Canada, apparently heckling from non-MP's is allowed, but the Speaker of the Parliament (is he or she called something different there?) acted almost like a referee and when the heckling got to loud they put a stop to it. I found watching Parliament interesting recently.
I.M. : did I describe it accurately?
You're not wrong in that heckling is a fairly common occurrence in Westminster style parliamentary democracies, but in this case I was using it figuratively. Abortion is a third rail of Canadian politics, at least for the right. Any attempt to touch it leads to howls of outrage from our elites, our media, etc. that the right to an abortion is sacrosanct and how dare any Conservative propose a measure that might just be a stalking horse to taking away or even putting the slightest of limits upon that right.
Every Conservative leader has to go through the performance of vowing that he will not allow any legislation concerning abortion to be introduced were he to become prime minister. The language he uses must be unambiguously clear else he is accused of harboring a hidden agenda. Such is the Canadian left and Canadian culture, which is predominantly left. We almost make California look sane.
Wow. Learned a lot aboot Canada this year. ( that of course was in good humor eh? ЁЯША)
Feel free to rib this Native Tex for her тАЬyтАЩallsтАЭ.
On a serious note: I weep for Canada and Israel and a couple other countries and their people.
This is heartbreakingly sad.
Our new Supreme Court "justice" cannot define a woman. If she, a woman, cannot define a woman, how can she define the legal status of the unborn?
In the states, it really doesn't matter what the people think. All that matters is pandering to the minority and advancing the progressive opinion. For example, there have been elections banning gay marriage that have been overturned. So really, the people have no say in any of this.
Finally, there are two states that are moving to essentailly make murder legal up to 28 days after birth. It is framed under "pregnancy complications." Not sure how you can have "pregnancy complications" after a child is born, but what do I know?
Your thought experiment is a bad approach because the underlying premise is that moral judgments and legal standards should be determined by subjective reactions rather than objective realities. Trying to define a person by considering our feelings about whether the baby is "alive enough" is part of how we got into this abortion morass in the first place. Yes, we should agree on a definition of a person, but not according to how we feel about babies in the womb. Objective, not subjective.
Courts have already routinely been deciding these issues. Roe may be in jeopardy, but there have always been pregnant women dying under different tragic circumstances.
indeed, and this provides something of a window into out societal mores, but, and this is a non-trivial but, the question of "is this a thing we should leave to courts to decide?" remains.
is that an outcome we want?
It was decided judicially because some people did not like unfavorable political outcomes. Others did not like that there were different political outcomes in different jurisdictions. Some people also figured that if the Court settled it, it would be settled for all time. How poorly they anticipated the near non-stop wrangling -- legal and extralegal -- that followed for nearly a half-century.
Never mind the extreme politicization of the courts. Not that that began with Roe, but Roe certainly cast a long shadow.
The courts are (or are supposed to be) deciding these cases based on statues in the case of criminal matters or prior decisions in that state in the case of tort claims. And btw that means these matters are often decided by jury.
this seems a circular argument.
most of those came from courts.
statute is silent in the US on the time at which cells in a uterus become a person with rights.
I'm not sure how many state statutes speak to crimes involving babies in the womb, but what's your point? Should we revisit all those decisions to criticize them? Or to learn from them and see their consequences? And do you really think this is an area where, if we aren't legislating, we need to start doing so? Maybe, but maybe not.
my point is that if we establish a specific point at which an embryo becomes a person and therefore possesses right, that all this patchwork ambiguity ceases and that we can bring all such laws into alignment with when a woman has a right to terminate a pregnancy as a function of her self determination and when such a right is superseded by another person's right not to be killed and the care owed to a child by a parent.
it is true that many places in the US, if a pregnant woman and her unborn child die, there are TWO counts of manslaughter brought on the perpetrator. So IF our law can prosecute for that , doesn't it mean that they acknowledge that the baby is alive, and not just cells, but a living human being. If a baby has a heart beat it is a living being. I hope the courts will stop acting like this isn't true.
No one questions that the fetus is alive. That is not the point. And it is called a fetus, not a baby. Please don't use language in a deliberatively misleading way.
Ill call it as I see it, its a baby. It has a heartbeat, it can survive outside the womb long before 40 weeks gestation. You are trying to distract from the fact that a baby is a living thing. THAT is your issue, but I don't have to agree with you. Killing a living baby is murder, not sure how you can argue that point, but you are free to think what you want.
Using abortion as contraception is LAZY... again free country, you think as you wish, but thanks for playing.
You say it's a free county... yet you want to impose your beliefs on me and other women who don't share them. That's not ok.
No, what reversing Roe v Wade is doing is putting out back in the states hands. Why is that so hard for you to admit? Also wondering why you think it's OK to kill a baby???? It's a free country in that we all get to vote on how this all goes down. Killing babies is wrong, if you don't want to have this be an issue don't get pregnant, and assume you can use abortion as birth control. Stop whining and watch what happens. You don't even know if scotus will follow through. If you don't like that murder is wrong, that's your problem. you're free to go else where, take your pussy hat with you as you leave.
This is an excellent point. In the past the law has come down on the side of whether or not there is a positive expectation of a child. In other words, the fetus has status through the mother. You are right that this is a conversation we need to have so that we have codified in law whether the fetus itself has personhood separate from the expectations of the mother.
The Talmud declares the fetus is not counted as human for the purpose of such jurisprudence until the beginning of emergence from the uterus begins.
What does the Talmud say about the rights of slaves?
What's your point?