There’s some legal murkiness I could see coming from that, but in principle it seems like something you would have to prosecute after the individual was born.
If a fetus isn’t a person, then there’s no victim. The potential of a victim isn’t the same as a victim. The intention for there to be a victim doesn’t even create a victim.
I think about the closest thing you could argue for would be that if a person knew they were pregnant, could have aborted but chose not to, and engaged in behavior that demonstrably caused harm once there was a live person, then maybe you could argue some type of negligence. But even that feels really close to a slippery slope to me, and makes me too uncomfortable.
If for no other reason than it could create a situation where someone is prosecuted for knowingly reproducing while having a measurable statistical chance of a heritable birth defect, or just being above the age where down syndrome becomes more likely.
If a fetus isn’t a person, then there’s no victim. The potential of a victim isn’t the same as a victim. The intention for there to be a victim doesn’t even create a victim.
Except this is precisely the opposite of the logic used if some third party causes the harm. If, say, a pregnant woman gets shot in a mugging gone wrong and her fetus dies as a consequence, were more than willing to count that as a homicide and for some reason this line of reasoning vanishes.
It’s either a person or not, not whichever is more convenient to the mother in whatever situation occurs.
Personally, I wouldn’t be in favor of classifying that as a homicide, but would rather it be an aggravating factor attached to the crime of shooting the actual person.
There is a cost, morally and emotionally, to a fetus dying, but it’s not a crime against the fetus but the mother.
The existence of a law written in a way I disagree with doesn’t obligate me to agree with another one I disagree with.
There’s some legal murkiness I could see coming from that, but in principle it seems like something you would have to prosecute after the individual was born.
If a fetus isn’t a person, then there’s no victim. The potential of a victim isn’t the same as a victim. The intention for there to be a victim doesn’t even create a victim.
I think about the closest thing you could argue for would be that if a person knew they were pregnant, could have aborted but chose not to, and engaged in behavior that demonstrably caused harm once there was a live person, then maybe you could argue some type of negligence. But even that feels really close to a slippery slope to me, and makes me too uncomfortable.
If for no other reason than it could create a situation where someone is prosecuted for knowingly reproducing while having a measurable statistical chance of a heritable birth defect, or just being above the age where down syndrome becomes more likely.
Except this is precisely the opposite of the logic used if some third party causes the harm. If, say, a pregnant woman gets shot in a mugging gone wrong and her fetus dies as a consequence, were more than willing to count that as a homicide and for some reason this line of reasoning vanishes.
It’s either a person or not, not whichever is more convenient to the mother in whatever situation occurs.
Personally, I wouldn’t be in favor of classifying that as a homicide, but would rather it be an aggravating factor attached to the crime of shooting the actual person.
There is a cost, morally and emotionally, to a fetus dying, but it’s not a crime against the fetus but the mother.
The existence of a law written in a way I disagree with doesn’t obligate me to agree with another one I disagree with.