Ariel Castro indicted on aggravated murder, rape, kidnapping charges

[wickerwoman]

14. It's aggravated assault and reckless endangerment.

Grievous bodily harm. Kidnapping (is there a category of aggravated kidnapping?). I think we already have statutes that cover what he did without granting personhood to the fetus.

I also think it would be hard to prove attempted murder of the mother as intent in this case would be impossible to establish. Had the mother died, yes it would have been murder because she died. She didn't die. No "person" died. Therefore it's not murder.

In a perverse way, the way he did it argues against attempted murder. If he wanted to kill a girl chained in his basement that nobody was looking for and who had no way to defend herself, he had a million better options than starving her and punching her in the stomach. It was clear that his intent was to terminate the pregnancy without killing the mother.

I'm not willing to make unnecessary concessions to the anti-abortion lobby. If it's inside the mother, it's not a person. Once it's outside the mother, if it's capable of surviving, it's a person.