were due to aggravated battery and starvation. He could have killed the mother. He injured her many times with grave injuries. This is at least attempted murder of the mother.
What is the charge to bring, then, against terminating a pregnancy against the mother's will, and in a manner that endangers her life and causes great suffering? Is there a statute for that? Did he "steal" the fetus from her, which would relegate a potential life to the status of a material thing? At what point did the termination occur? Could the fetus have survived outside the mother?
We are all aware that a fetus is not an independent person, just as an embryo is not a fetus. But at some point, the embryo then fetus then premature infant becomes a baby. It is a progression with an indefinite timeline but with a presumed outcome. What of the abortion "doctor" who was recently charged with killing fetuses (premature babies?) that were moving, breathing, and perhaps crying after his aborting (forcibly delivering?) them? Is it only murder after a natural birth? If a baby (perhaps mistakenly premature at the time) is delivered by C-section, does the doctor or mother then have the right to terminate the baby's life?
Perhaps what we need is an entire section of law devoted to the unborn child, with appropriate applications for the stages of that child's development. We can't apply adult law to children in any reasonable fashion, and we cannot reasonably apply adult law or juvenile law to fetuses. We cannot simplify the complexity of this issue: The fetus is dependent upon the mother, and the mother should not be compelled to carry an unwanted child, especially if that pregnancy endangers her life. At some point, though, during the timeline of the pregnancy, the unborn fetus/potential child's welfare and assumed rights as a person, and the mother's rights of decision, become more closely aligned. However, no mother should be forced to endanger her life for the sake of a pregnancy. Not only is her life valuable, but ultimately, that potential child need a mother, as do any other children she might have.
In the case against this man, just as there are exacerabating circumstances in the commission of a crime, such as armed robbery versus simple robbery, there are so many factors involved here - including kidnapping, battery, imprisonment, repeated rapes, and more - along with the violent, depraved nature of the pregnancy's termination, along with his gross indifference to human life - to my way of thinking, these elevated the termination of prenancy in this case to the status of murder. Had the mother died during this ordeal, the charge of first degree murder of the mother would not have been questioned.
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