Since Mallory wrote about the bill that would make it so that you needed consent to the baby's father to get an abortion, I thought this was an interesting bit of news to talk about. I think this article makes it clear that the father's interests and the mother's interests absolutely do not always coincide--the fact that this young man had to resort to violence because he did not want to be a father so badly attests to that.
I think it's terrible that he pointed a gun at his girlfriend's head and tried to force her, on pain of death, to do something she did not want to do. I think he should be charged for attempted murder of his girlfriend. But the idea of fetal homicide laws, (about which the article says, "38 states have fetal homicide laws increasing penalties for crimes against pregnant women,") make me nervous, because whether or not a fetus is alive is a hot ticket issue in the abortion debate. I agree, if someone harms a pregnant woman and her fetus is damaged or ends up dying, that person needs to be prosecuted and face dire consequences. But it's using the word "murder" that worries me, as it does when I see slogans "abortion is murder" from the pro-life side of things.
Because if abortion is murder, then it's hard to argue as a right that all women should have. Of course there is a difference between harming a wanted pregnancy, and a woman choosing to terminate a pregnancy. However, if the law doesn't draw these lines now, I fear that these cases in which harming the fetus is called "murder" or "homicide" will set precedents for fetuses as living beings that cannot be harmed--which, in turn, will make it impossible to get an abortion. It's a really hard thing to think about, but ultimately, I believe that whether a woman thinks she's murdering her fetus or simply terminating it by getting an abortion should be up to her, and her alone.
Do you think that this precedent set by this Ohio case could bleed over into calling all abortion "murder" or do you see it as an isolated incident that won't affect the overall abortion debate? What about the clear discrepancy between what the father and mother want: does that speak well for the bill that would require the father's consent for an abortion? Can you see a difference between an outsider harming a wanted fetus, and a woman choosing to terminate her pregnancy, or are both of those things still "murder"?
--Alexandra
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