Abortion

You're incorrect. Legally, there is a difference between "murder" and a "fetal homicide", which is what you are talking about.

You're incorrect. Legally, there is a difference between "murder" and a "fetal homicide", which is what you are talking about.

whether is it manslaughter, homicide or murder doesn't matter. It is still the taking of "life".

Semantics, it's willful criminal homicide on the books in 36 states, which makes it perfectly analagous to murder and not at all analagous to manslaughter.

Fetal Homicide Laws

Nor do I think a mother should be held criminally responsible for inadvertant harm to a pregnancy she was unaware of.

To me this is getting extremely "sticky". If what you say is true, and abortion is murder, then one must reason there are those circumstances in which murder is to be legally sanctioned which is what abortion is.

For what he says to be true presupposes that you can inextricably tie a moral judgement to a biological phenomenon.

And that raises all the issues of how much do we KNOW about biological phenomena, and if we know enough to uniformly apply a moral judgement to what happens to a blastocyst or a morula.

No, I don't believe murder should ever be legally sanctioned, but that's because I believe in anarchism, and don't believe anything should be legally sanctioned, because there shouldn't be any law in the first place.

I know I shouldn't ask this, but are you being literal as to the current situation we find ourselves and to eliminate all laws?

William

Yes sir. No law is a good law.

Yes sir. No law is a good law.

Where did this enter into the discussion?

They love our milk an' honey,
But they preach about some other way of livin'...

But what if she smokes crack and then has a placental abruption, leading to the death of an unknown pregnancy? That would also be manslaughter or murder if the fetus is legally the same.

But what if she smokes crack and then has a placental abruption, leading to the death of an unknown pregnancy? That would also be manslaughter or murder if the fetus is legally the same.

As far a "not knowing" they were pregnant yet are still prosecuted, I had no knowledge such laws existed.

If fetuses were declared to be humans, it would be very difficult to prove in court, beyond a reasonable doubt, that smoking crack actually caused the death of the fetus.

If the pregnancy was unknown, it couldn't be murder, because murder requires intent.

But I do see the potential for many legal issues here.

This was my point. If a woman has the right to destroy her unborn, how could there be any law regarding this "lump of meat or non entity"

That's easy to prove. Cocaine (including crack) is one of the most common causes of placental abruption (when the placenta tears away from the uterine wall, which can cause catastrophic bleeding). There are other effects of cocaine that would be nearly impossible to attribute to anything else, like strokes and cardiomyopathy, etc. But this pertains to other things too -- like if the mother contracts HIV during pregnancy from IV drug use; or if the baby is born addicted to heroin; or if the baby has fetal alcohol syndrome. You get the point.

Criminally negligent homicide does not, though.

That's exactly my point. Laws CANNOT be based purely on morals, and they CANNOT be based purely on biology. Otherwise you get some bizarre situations. So it's a double standard -- the human organism is NOT the same from conception all the way through old age and death, and we have to be somewhat arbitrary in how we apply moral judgments and legal constraints.

As for the justification for legal abortion, my take on it is that the interest of the mother far outweighs the interest of the state in her individual pregnancy. Secondly, medical decisions are best left to a mother, her doctor, and the people she trusts. Third, the potential for abuse (i.e. repeated, excessive abortions) exists but its importance is outweighed by the justifications for keeping it legal. Fourth, the medical community already discourages unnecessary repeated abortions because it can cause Asherman's syndrome.

You'd find a number of societies currently have no laws or no ability to enforce laws. These include Somalia, eastern Congo, southern Sudan, Burundi, and for much of the last 6 years Iraq. Angola for the last generation up until Jonas Savimbi died is another great example of anarchy. Northern Pakistan and much of Afghanistan remain functionally lawless. You might reflect upon the former Yugoslavia from 1993-1996 or so, or Haiti during the 1990s.

Having some examples of societies that meet your philosophical ideals, why is it that you would choose to remain in your current land with all its legal encroachments? Why not move to Somalia? You'd have an amazing amount of wealth there, you know, and you could get all the guns and armed guards you want -- you could be a warlord unto yourself.

Ah, those societies are not, though, in anarchy. They are in omniarchy. There is quite a distinction: Wapedia - Wiki: Omniarchy