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?

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.

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.

Loren Pechtel

And the court should toss it for this very reason.

LGM

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.

Evolutionist

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.

gee

Evolutionist;

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?

gee

chapka

What Roe v. Wade actually says is:

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.

Toto

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.

Tom Sawyer

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.