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Old 01-17-2006, 07:26 PM   #1
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Default Does the unborn victims of violence act contradict Roe vs Wade?

The Roe v. Wade decision reducibly stood on the notion that the unborn aren't persons, which is odd, because it seems to contradict the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which equated the intentional killing of "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb." with a that of a human being, yet arbitrarily made an exception for abortion.

Is this a contradiction? How does this law fit in with Roe vs Wade?
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Old 01-17-2006, 07:38 PM   #2
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That law was an attempt to erode Roe v. Wade by creating the new idea that a foetus is a person (unknown to Anglo-Saxon jursiprudence up to that time). There is an exception in the law for abortion because that was necessary to get the law passed. It doesn't fit in at all.

I suppose you could argue that Roe v. Wade is primarily based on the privacy rights of the pregnant woman, and that even if the foetus has some legal standing, the woman's interests in her own bodily integrity outweigh those of the foetus - but this argument could not be used for a third party.
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Old 01-17-2006, 09:26 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Toto
That law was an attempt to erode Roe v. Wade by creating the new idea that a foetus is a person (unknown to Anglo-Saxon jursiprudence up to that time). There is an exception in the law for abortion because that was necessary to get the law passed. It doesn't fit in at all.
And the court should toss it for this very reason.
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Old 01-18-2006, 05:21 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Evolutionist
The Roe v. Wade decision reducibly stood on the notion that the unborn aren't persons, which is odd, because it seems to contradict the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which equated the intentional killing of "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb." with a that of a human being, yet arbitrarily made an exception for abortion.

Is this a contradiction? How does this law fit in with Roe vs Wade?
Well it would seem to me that you can make a law that it's a more serious offense if an assault on a pregnant woman results in the damage or loss of her fetus without equating the fetus rights with that of a living human.
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Old 01-18-2006, 02:54 PM   #5
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So this is like those building laws which are used to discriminate against abortion and med clinics- trying to get around the Roe vs Wade ruling?

What do you think should happen to someone who assaulted a pregnant woman causing the loss of the foetus? I'm of the opinion that they should be punished somehow as they are damaging her chances of having a child she chose to have.

I'm not sure how I would feel about it if it were in the 1st trimester though- probably the same, for the same reasons, even though I do not think the foetus has developed enough yet to be classified as a human being. It has everything to do with the mother and her choices in that case- not the embryo-foetus itself.
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Old 01-19-2006, 02:28 PM   #6
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Evolutionist;

Quote:
The Roe v. Wade decision reducibly stood on the notion that the unborn aren't persons, which is odd, because it seems to contradict the Unborn Victims of Violence Act,
If what you say is true about Roe v Wade,
Yes the laws are absolutely contradictory.

If a fetus is not any kind of life, how can it suffer violence?

As a pro-lifer; I have always appreciated the notion of

- the unborn victims of violence act
- the immoral nature of gender selective abortion

because they seem to provide a 'counter weight' the ideas of Roe v. Wade.
Especially if we give your 'reduction' of Roe v. Wade.

I wonder if many folks would grant your reduction?

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Old 01-19-2006, 03:00 PM   #7
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What Roe v. Wade actually says is:

Quote:
Appellant's arguments that Texas either has no valid interest at all in regulating the abortion decision, or no interest strong enough to support any limitation upon the woman's sole determination, are unpersuasive. The Court's decisions recognizing a right of privacy also acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected by that right is appropriate. As noted above, a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court's decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905) (vaccination); Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) (sterilization).

We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.
In other words, there's no conflict between a statute that recognizes the state's interest in a potential life and Roe v. Wade, because Roe v. Wade itself discusses that interest.

I haven't read the statute in question myself, so I can't comment on its language specifically, but in general the idea that a law criminalizing the involuntary termination of a pregnancy makes a fetus legally the equivalent of a legal person is a false dichotomy. All such a law means is that the state has an interest in protecting the health and safety of the fetus, which is not a revolutionary concept--it's right there in Roe v. Wade.

Based on the OP's reasoning, the Endangered Species Act, which criminalizes the killing of members of certain other species, would give them human status as well.
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Old 01-19-2006, 03:07 PM   #8
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The Act itself need not be contrary to Roe V. Wade. But the anti-abortion crowd thought that it was a big victory to insert the terms "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development" into the law, because it tended to legitimize the idea that human personhood begins at conception.
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Old 01-20-2006, 07:56 AM   #9
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For me, the main point of Roe vs Wade wasn't the status of the fetus as a person per se, but the ability of the woman to be able to make the choice as to whether to keep that fetus and allow it to develop into a person.

If a woman has made that choice and wants to keep the fetus and let it develop into a person, then killing that fetus is killing a potential person, since the mother has chosen that this baby will be born and that choice by her to let it become a person is enough for me to want to grant the fetus a legal status superior to the fetus of a woman who has made the different choice.

That means that the exception for abortion in the Unborn Victims of Violence Act isn't really contradictory, since it takes the right of the woman to choose what will happen to the fetus into account and lets her keep that choice. It just basically says that once she has made the choice to have the baby, the fetus is then recognized as someone who will become a person - not by benefit of having human DNA, but by benefit of the mother's choice to carry it to term.

Yes, the people who made the law most likely did it to start to whittle away at Row vs Wade, but I don't think it actually does so. I think it is consistent with Roe vs Wade and is just the logical extension of giving a woman the ability to choose and giving both her and her fetus the respect that is due to them as a result of that choice.
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