Kerry has his priorities... Are they yours?

John Kennedy also had poor attendance and voting record during the time he ran for President. It's the name of the game for both sides of the aisle. It's politics. If one is not cognizant of this they will fall for that insipid ad.

Suzy, may I suggest you read this thread. I think you'd be standing next to me on the issue we're discussing right now. Wouldn't that be fun? :wink:

I am leaning to the right on this one...

If there's a bug in the bill as written I can't find it as far as what little has been posted. Since the Senators and Congressmen don't actually read every bill they vote on (they get advised...!) then there might be something in the text that's worrisome. Otherwise, I'm with Bill and Kicky on this one. Read it the other way around and it would be someone performed an abortion who was not licensed, qualified nor given permission. It's at least manslaughter if it can't be proven the person deliberately aborted the fetus and then I think the terminology of "murder" or "killed" may be hanging it up.

Cool LW, I was about to shake you!

The excuses for not wanting this bill are all muted by the wording of the bill. Abortion-doesn't apply, Health care- doesn't apply, the woman herself- doesn't apply. What is left to ponder? Anybody?

Are we trying not to be to rough on wife-beaters? Are they the ones who need protection? This law doesn't touch normal, decent people at all. Think of it as one more good reason not to beat your wife. Heh?

Sorry Kerry fans, he was wrong here. Try to remember if is more important than who when making laws.

Bill, whether or not abortion applies it was a milestone very relevant to the abortion question because it legally defined an unborn child as a life, as a separate legal entity. This is controversial ground because in some ways it is granting a fetus legal rights.

There was a lot of fear that it would later be used in the abortion dispute once defined thusly.

Don't revise history Bill. This was no open and shut bill, it only got through with the celebrity of the case it rode in on.

That was a controversial one and understandably so. I would still have voted it down even with that wording.

What's that revise history, open shut stuff about? Did you by any chance miss the word "should" somewhere?

Craven,
1) The law specifically excludes abortion...
2) Am I wrong in assuming only the Supreme Court could overturn roe vs. wade anyway?

Like I said to Phoenix: if you want to go to a pro-choice rally, I'll drive. This law is specifically worded to exclude that.

Roe v Wade actually assigns value to the unborn chld in its wording which is exquisite. In simplest terms, it says that in the first trimester, the state has little or no interest. In the second trimester the state has a degree of interest, and in the third trimester, the state has a good deal of interest. I think those who wrote that opinion did not envision legal late term abortions and partial birth abortions would have been considered murder.

As so often happens, however, the court tends to expand and increase laws as it interprets them.

I wouldn't drive anyone to a pro choice rally as I am staunchly pro life. I just don't want my government telling me I have to be.

I have not said otherwise Bill.



Bill, how about we skip wholly irrelevant questions. Nobody's talking about who has to overturn that and nobody is even speaking of a present change to the laws on abortion at all.

The bill was very widely seen as encroaching on the right to choose in a tiny but possibly important way. It was not itself changing any laws on abortion.

I trust you can envision a situation in which a law does not change another law but that many suspect contains a step in the direction of doing so.

I like the bill and I dislike the bill. I hate to be a fence rider.but ahhhhhhh, I can't decide. I have seen more than a few people come through my courtrooms w/ battery upon a pregnant person and they're charged with only the crime upon the woman....they were charged extra, because she was pregnant, but not with batteries uponthe unborn child.

Though it might seem odd to charge an individual w/ a crime against an unborn baby they didn't know was there, is there a whole lof of difference between that and being charged w/ the death of unseen occupents of houses say....in driveby shootings or soemthing?

edit: the 'dislike' comes w/ the whole unborn legal rights thing....I am just at a loss as to where it begins *shrug*

I'm well aware of that Craven. The "irrelevant questions" you objected to are my answer to those concerns. They were unfounded. I object to placing a higher priority on a non-tangible concern than on the victims of violent crimes. That doesn't make sense to me.

Of course. This one works just fine for that.
There's no need to repeat why I think that doesn't matter, is there?

Sure, Bill, I might have happily stuck to the question except that Phoenix brought up Kerry's recent voting record and you all jumped on the bandwagon, so that needed to be addressed first.
As to this bill, I voted no. I also notice that only three people bothered to vote. Apparently this site is just like a cross-section of America!
I vote no because I don't believe that an unborn fetus has or should have the same rights and protections as a living person, and I think that some who voted for this see it as simply a back door to overturning Roe V Wade. Whether that is do-able or not, it's a slippery slope. We cannot assign rights to things that are not alive, and must continue to protect the rights of those who are.
Having said that, do I think that harming or killing the fetus of a happily expecting parent should go unpunished? Of course not. But what can we do? On the other hand, who ever told you that life is fair? It isn't. This may just have to be one of those things we can't resolve. I lost a baby, but I couldn't send God to the slammer for that. It was "tough **** for suzy". That's the way it goes. Life aint fair, and bad things happen to good people. Every day.
Here's a scenario for ya: Crack-whore Wendy gets mad at her boyfriend and asks a trick to smack her around, causing herself to miscarry so her boyfriend will go to jail.
Or Joe wants to divorce Sally so he can date his high school student, but she refuses because she thinks the "baby" will fix the marriage, so Joe spikes Sally's coffee with cocaine, then turns her in to the cops so she can be charged with attempting to "murder" her fetus, and he can get a no sweat quickie divorce.
Tis a funny thing that many who lean to the right squawk about less government and less laws unless it's something having to do with "pro-life", which is what this eventually, after peeling off some layers, comes down to.

You seem to be asking for it Suzy. Are you sure?

She makes a few good points ...

Agreed. I loved this one.
"I also notice that only three people bothered to vote. Apparently this site is just like a cross-section of America!"

What lacking concern for victims? This new law can't come into play in any way that was not criminalized by laws that existed prior to it.

So it's not like it's a new law preventing any acts, it's a change in legal status for the fetus.

Thankfully we are not faced with this choice, as to harm or kill a fetus against the wills of its owner could not be done with impunity prior to the law.

I have to ask. Since this bill did not pass,and since a fetus has no legal protections,then how can Scott Peterson be charged with killing the fetus Laci was carrying?
BTW,this law should have passed.It seems like a no brainer to me.

What are you talking about? Bush signed it into law on April 1st 2004. And even then, it can't be applied retrocatively and has no bearing on the Peterson charges.

California already had a similar law, this was just using the celebrity of the case to get a federal law on the books.

Bill, if this is about concern for a fetus more than about legally defining a fetus as alive why was Senator Dianne Feinstein's amendment to it that would allow for the imposition of punishment without changing the legal status of the fetus rejected?