Fetal Homicide and Abortion What is the Difference?

The difference is, one of them is a tragic side effect of killing an adult who happens to be pregnant; the other is a personal health care decision protected by the Constitution of the United States of America.

The law thing is not a coincidence, it's called bait-and-switch. Anti-choice elements specifically passed fetal homocide laws in preparation for the abortion argument. You push through one law that seems non-controversial based on the groundwork it lays for a future battle. Pretty slick, really. Sort of like how they always talk about the "child" but never about the mother. She still counts too... doesn't she?

Sure, a fetus is "alive", but it is still a part of the mother. At birth, it becomes a separate human being with rights of its own. If the key thing is whether something is "alive", every single day thousands of patients have tumors removed which were just as "alive" as a fetus in utero - connected to the host, blood pumping through them, etc. So are we going to call all of these people - both the cancer patients who needed life-saving surgery AND the people who hade elective surgery to remove a mole or something - are we going to call them all "murderers"? I think we can agree that would be ridiculous. But technically, they caused the death of something that was "alive".

When people can't convince you of something without using loaded words like "murder" to try to get an emotional reaction out of you, it's time to get skeptical of their intentions, how well they've thought out the issue, or both. Just because someone says "think of the children" does not, nor will it ever, make it wrong or evil to think about the mother.

At what point in gestation is it considered fetal homicide? This is one of the primary differences. Abortion is no longer legal if it must be performed as a partial birth abortion, usually around the start of the 2nd trimester. At least in New York, Fetal Homicide kicks in AFTER 28 weeks, a minimum of 12 weeks after an abortion would be termed "illegal".

Another difference would be the viability of the fetus. If it could be born, and breathe and live either on it's own or with mechanical assistance, then abortion would be ethically wrong, and the charge of felony murder would be justified. But, if it is not yet a viable human being, then felony murder would be an excessive charge.

It doesn't, really. This was not a liberal idea, but a conservative one... a way to (a) be harder on crime, (b) and undermine the idea that an embryo or a fetus is not a person. Liberal groups went along with it as it is a "progressive" family measure.

The way it resolves is because the focus in the criminal statute isn't whether the fetus is a person, or "alive," it's the harm done. A person killing an embryo or fetus gestating in a woman is a bad act, regardless of whether the fetus is a "person" a "potential person" or a ball of cells that the mom wanted to have implanted in her.

It's illegal to steal someone else's car and sell it for scrap (even if you'd give the money back to the owner or give it to charity), but it's not illegal for you to take your car to the junkyard. Why? Aren't all cars equal?? No, it's because the first person deprived the owner of the right to decide whether to junk his car... his own property. It's illegal to steal someone's cat and kill them, but it's not illegal to have your pet (humanely) euthanized. Why? Same reason.

The same could be said for fetal homicide-- it's the mother's choice whether to carry a pregnancy to term. Taking an action that interrupts that choice is a criminal act. It matters not whether the fetus is a child. It's unfortunate that the statute is called "homicide", but see my above comments regarding the political forces at play in that one.

its a double standard, simple as that.

If a person kills a woman or injures her, thereby causing the death of a fetus, then then the death of the fetus is treated as murder.

However if a woman wishes to perform an abortion in the 1st trimester of pregnancy, then that is her right under the 14th amendment right to privacy as ruled in Roe v Wade in 1973.

Yes its a contradition but these fetus rights laws were passed with the express purpose of chipping away at roe v wade since roe was based on the premise that the fetus has no legal rights. google roe v wade and read it some time, it will be very enlightening for you on this issue. But the bottom line here is a constitutional right trumps everythign else, so the state law cannot make abortion itself illigal since the supreme court has said its a fundamental constitutional right, but they can pass laws against criminals who harm a fetus.

I think you're absolutely correct. Either a fetus is alive and considered a viable human life prior to birth, or it's not. You can't have it both ways.

Generally speaking, my reading leads me to believe that a fetus has been considered a human life from the point of conception across every human society over time until this current cultural mileau and the advocacy of generally available abortion. I freely admit my reading may be limited, but I cannot find any objective, logical argument to conclude that a human life only begins at physical birth - IMHO a human fetus is fully alive at conception no matter what definition of life a biological scientist chooses to apply.

This, of course, isn't a very popular decision nowadays in the US as the logical implications of this are very easy to reach and very, very clear.

Your head doesn't need to explode. You just need to apply your very good logic and conclude which law is based upon a faulty premise.

Best to you.

its a double standard, simple as that.

If a person kills a woman or injures her, thereby causing the death of a fetus, then then the death of the fetus is treated as murder.

However if a woman wishes to perform an abortion in the 1st trimester of pregnancy, then that is her right under the 14th amendment right to privacy as ruled in Roe v Wade in 1973.

Yes its a contradiction but these fetus rights laws were passed with the express purpose of chipping away at roe v wade since roe was based on the premise that the fetus has no legal rights. google roe v wade and read it some time, it will be very enlightening for you on this issue. But the bottom line here is a constitutional right trumps everything else, so the state Law cannot make abortion itself illegal since the supreme court has said its a fundamental constitutional right, but they can pass laws against criminals who harm a fetus.

Fetal homicide is the killing of the unborn in the course of the fee of a criminal offense. Abortion is criminal and by no potential a criminal offense. it truly is likewise determined upon by technique of the mother, and it truly is controversial as to if the fetus is considered its own being or in simple terms an extension of the mother.

There is no difference between fetal homicide and abortion. Murder is murder. Abortion was illegal before a liberal judge decided to legislate from the bench.

According to our founding fathers every human being has the right to life and that right can't be taken away without due process. The innocent babies are not given due process before they are murdered.

Hopefully Roe vs Wade will be overturned and baby killers will have to seek a constitutional ammendment to make killing babies legal again.

A woman undergoing an abortion is doing it of her own choice. How is this a double standard if the law says that it is fetal homicide if the baby dies under assault? Abortion is not assault, it's an elective procedure, and no one has a right to tell a woman they cannot have one performed.

The only difference is a law written by a handfull of judges. Stop looking for logic, it will only make your head explode.