Reply #2: Unborn Victims of Violence Act passes Senate/House -Abortion=murder?

[papau]

Unborn Victims of Violence Act passes Senate/House -Abortion=murder?


Saletan avoids Hillary's message that the goal should be to PREVENT unwanted pregnancies, reminding people that some pro-life groups also oppose birth control.

However, I did like his point that "A human embryo is a member of our species. But that doesn't mean it's a person. An adult is a senior member of the species. A child is a junior member. A viable fetus is a more junior member. A pre-viable fetus is a still more junior member. A zygote is the most junior member. You can argue that personhood begins at viability while admitting that human distinctness begins at conception. On the other hand, if you deny the human distinctness of the fetus, most people will stop listening to you."

http://slate.msn.com/id/2097927 /

Face the Fetus
It's time for abortion rights advocates to stop denying reality.
By William Saletan (also on NPR's Day to Day)
Posted Monday, March 29, 2004, at 3:28 PM PT

How long can supporters of abortion rights go on denying the distinct legal significance of unborn human life? Not any longer, if they want to save Roe v. Wade.

That's the message the U.S. Senate delivered Thursday as it passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. Under UVVA, which had already passed the House, anyone who injures or "causes the death" of a "child in utero" during a violent federal crime will get the same punishment "provided under Federal law for that conduct had that injury or death occurred to the unborn child's mother." The bill defines a "child in utero" as "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb." President Bush will soon sign it into law.

Once enacted, the law will double the penalty for any boyfriend, husband, or thug who harms or kills a fetus in the course of beating or killing a pregnant woman. More broadly, it will enshrine in federal law the principle that killing a fetus is legally equivalent to killing a child. That's exactly the principle the Supreme Court rejected in Roe.

Advocates of UVVA say it won't affect abortion rights because it stipulates, "Nothing in this section shall be construed to permit the prosecution … of any person for conduct relating to an abortion for which the consent of the pregnant woman, or a person authorized by law to act on her behalf, has been obtained." But the exemption is plainly illogical. Imagine a federal ban on gay marriage that stipulated, "Nothing in this section shall apply to a daughter of the Vice President of the United States." A gay marriage is a gay marriage. A child is a child. Once the embryo is defined as a child, and killing it is defined as killing a child, abortion at any stage of pregnancy becomes murder—immediately in theory, and eventually in law.<snip>




William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.