Abortion and fetal murder

[Darth Wong]

Over the past couple of years, I've seen a particularly ingenious anti-abortion argument floating around. It states that if people don't think that full rights should be assigned at the moment of conception, then they should not want to lay extra charges against criminals who injure pregnant women and cause a miscarriage. Of course, the signature case for this line of reasoning is the Scott Peterson murder trial, where he was accused of murdering both his wife and her unborn child.

It is sufficiently ingenious that I have seen numerous abortion-rights advocates admit that they are rattled by it, and have trouble reconciling it with their views.

To those people, I would like to point out that ethics are about values, ie- things we place value on. In this case, we place great value on human life, but not necessarily human tissue. Anti-abortionists and pro-abortionists differ on the point where they differentiate the two. Anti-abortionists claim that if pro-abortionists truly believed the point was in the 2nd trimester, they should have no problem with a criminal forcing a 1st trimester miscarriage. Pro-abortionists claim that if anti-abortionists truly believed the point was the moment of conception, they should not allow abortions even in cases of rape, incest, or a grave threat to the life of the mother (after all, you wouldn't kill a woman to save a child).

I haven't ever seen an anti-abortionist produce a good rebuttal to the latter claim, but there's a fairly easy rebuttal to the former. Value is a complex concept which can incorporate both future and present value. Future values, however, to take the analogy of financial value, are always based on promises, not tangible goods. In other words, you can declare an asset on your balance sheet if I give you cash right now, or you can declare an asset on your balance sheet if I promise to give you cash in six months (appropriately corrected for interest). A promise is less reliable than cash in hand, but it is also more substantive than nothing, hence companies can put loans on their balance sheets as assets.

So how does this apply to abortion and fetal murder? Simple: the fetus of a woman who plans to have the baby has more value than the fetus of a woman who plans to have an abortion, because the first woman has made a promise to carry that baby to term, and the second one hasn't. The promise is the value, and in the case of a baby, that's a considerable value. That's why killing a fetus in the womb should be a crime if the woman plans to have the baby, but not if she doesn't. That's also why the "future value" argument cannot be used against abortion; without the promise to carry the baby to term, the future value is zero.

[Zero]

I've always said that the woman has a right to her own body. That's part of the nature of the argument for pro-choice. As such, someone forcing an abortion is an obvious violation of her own right to choose. It's like rape.. taking control of someone else's body to enforce your own desires over it is bad on it's own; the fetus doesn't have to have rights for forced abortion to be fucked up.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

If it's a fetus, I would think that it depends on the preferences of the mother entirely at that point. The mother is a sapient organism with far more, not to mention, far more complex preferences. Her life and her preferences are more valuable than the extremely limited, reflexive/biological behavior of the fetus, since it's got no rational attributes.

So, the value of the fetus wouldn't be intrinsic in that case. If the mother wants to terminate it, it is due to the value equation she set up in her head. The fetus has instrumental value.

Even though the fetus has far less value than the sapient organism (the mother), the instrumental utility I would assume could also go the other way, no? If someone murders your fetus, that fetus was valuable to you, as the mother and family that wanted it. That would be the wrong?

[Kojiro]

So how does this apply to abortion and fetal murder? Simple: the fetus of a woman who plans to have the baby has more value than the fetus of a woman who plans to have an abortion, because the first woman has made a promise to carry that baby to term, and the second one hasn't.

Just for the sake of discussion, what's the value of a fetus the woman hasn't yet decided to keep or abort, or didn't know she was carrying at the time of death? Do we give the killer a double murder charge, assuming the default of keeping or do we assume that until the promise is firmly given the value is still zero and apply only a single charge? Does a father who loses an unborn in such a way have any right to compensation?

[Darth Wong]

Just for the sake of discussion, what's the value of a fetus the woman hasn't yet decided to keep or abort, or didn't know she was carrying at the time of death? Do we give the killer a double murder charge, assuming the default of keeping or do we assume that until the promise is firmly given the value is still zero and apply only a single charge? Does a father who loses an unborn in such a way have any right to compensation?

If a woman knows she's pregnant but hasn't decided to abort, then she's effectively keeping the baby. This is not the kind of decision that you can simply postpone indefinitely; it sort of makes itself if you don't. As for the totally unknown pregnancy, I see no reason why anyone should consider it in sentencing.

[Kojiro]

Of course you can't postpone it indefinitely but you're saying a woman who is undecided effectively has a default 'yes', derived from the fact that pregnancy will proceed on it's own unless you specifically act on a 'no'. However you ascribe a default 'no' to an unknown pregnancy, which will or course carry itself out just as the known one will.

In otherwords why the distinction based on knowledge of the potential? After all, neither has made the promise to carry the child, it's future (and value) is in no way assured. If we're to presume an undecided chooses to keep (or abort), should we not also presume an uninformed would do the same?

[Darth Raptor]

There's no value on things you don't know exist.

[Zero]

There's no value on things you don't know exist.

Doesn't Mike's argument relating to future value still apply, though? I mean, if we don't actually know what the victim would have chosen in reguards to keeping the thing or aborting it, the potential value of the fetus is entirely unknown, so can it really be evaluated specifically as 0?

[Darth Raptor]

Doesn't Mike's argument relating to future value still apply, though? I mean, if we don't actually know what the victim would have chosen in reguards to keeping the thing or aborting it, the potential value of the fetus is entirely unknown, so can it really be evaluated specifically as 0?

The existence of the fetus is entirely unknown. Ergo, its value is zero. In the context of the woman's rights and sovereignty over her body, she has nothing invested in something she's unaware of, financially or emotionally.

[Zero]

Doesn't Mike's argument relating to future value still apply, though? I mean, if we don't actually know what the victim would have chosen in reguards to keeping the thing or aborting it, the potential value of the fetus is entirely unknown, so can it really be evaluated specifically as 0?

The existence of the fetus is entirely unknown. Ergo, its value is zero. In the context of the woman's rights and sovereignty over her body, she has nothing invested in something she's unaware of, financially or emotionally.

But Mike above mentioned future value as a measure of the value of a fetus, so long as the mother had chosen to keep it. If the mother didn't even know of the fetus yet, then your assumption of 0 value implies that she necessarily would have aborted it, but her decision reguarding her pregnancy is something we can only speculate upon. Why is the future value of the fetus which may have become a person immediately zero simply because we're uncertain of whether it would have actually been allowed to become a person or not?

[Darth Raptor]

But Mike above mentioned future value as a measure of the value of a fetus, so long as the mother had chosen to keep it. If the mother didn't even know of the fetus yet, then your assumption of 0 value implies that she necessarily would have aborted it, but her decision reguarding her pregnancy is something we can only speculate upon. Why is the future value of the fetus which may have become a person immediately zero simply because we're uncertain of whether it would have actually been allowed to become a person or not?

That's not the reason. Abstract and potential or not, the value of a fetus is only in regards to the parents and their plans for it. Assigning a value of zero to a fetus that no one knows about is not assuming the mother will choose to abort. Rather, it's recognizing that the mother has placed no value in it whatsoever as of yet.

[Kuroneko]

While Mr. Wong's argument is a very effective one toward criminalizing these types of actions, it does not justify a murder charge for the termination of a fetus in any circumstance. The parents are deprived of the fulfillment of this type of promise, and hence harmed--even the father is (or can be) one of the promisees. But even with full foreknowledge and decision to carry the fetus to term, no human being has been deprived of his or her own self's life.

The existence of the fetus is entirely unknown. Ergo, its value is zero. In the context of the woman's rights and sovereignty over her body, she has nothing invested in something she's unaware of, financially or emotionally.

That does not follow. As an analogy, imagine that if you own land that happens to have a substantial deposit of diamond of which you are not aware. You become aware of it only after someone comes in without your permission, mines it out, and keeps it. Did a theft occur?

[Darth Raptor]

That does not follow. As an analogy, imagine that if you own land that happens to have a substantial deposit of diamond of which you are not aware. You become aware of it only after someone comes in without your permission, mines it out, and keeps it. Did a theft occur?

Legally speaking, I'm not sure. However, the integrity of your property was violated. We know an assault took place, the question is whether a murder did as well. A more appropriate analogy would be if someone deliberately dropped a bomb on your house. All other things considered, should they also be held accountable for the diamond deposit niether of you knew existed (which was destroyed)?

[Zero]

While Mr. Wong's argument is a very effective one toward criminalizing these types of actions, it does not justify a murder charge for the termination of a fetus in any circumstance. The parents are deprived of the fulfillment of this type of promise, and hence harmed--even the father is (or can be) one of the promisees. But even with full foreknowledge and decision to carry the fetus to term, no human being has been deprived of his or her own self's life.

I don't believe he was arguing that it ought to be seen as equal to a murder charge, only that fetus murder isn't a situation with no ethics involved, like abortion.

[Kuroneko]

Legally speaking, I'm not sure. However, the integrity of your property was violated. We know an assault took place, the question is whether a murder did as well.

Based only on the original argument, it did not in either case. (As for legality, that is a different question.)

A more appropriate analogy would be if someone deliberately dropped a bomb on your house. All other things considered, should they also be held accountable for the diamond deposit niether of you knew existed (which was destroyed)?

There is already an overwhelming precedent over varying punishment depending on whether the action was deliberate or accidental, so it is not at all a problem to extend cases like these to vary the culpability depending on the assaulter's foreknowledge. But to answer your question, yes, there is still culpability for it. It is a dangerous precedent for such matters to critically depend on the would-be owner's current knowledge, as that opens the door to nearly unrestricted burglarizing of amnesiacs and similar scenarios. And the position you advance prohibits you from assigning value based on the past state of affairs only--as it goes, if one has no fiscal or emotional investment, it does not matter. On the other hand, the position that everything on the property belongs to the owner and that they would be deprived if something is taken regardless of their knowledge resolves this hypothetical difficulty very effectively.

I don't believe he was arguing that it ought to be seen as equal to a murder charge, only that fetus murder isn't a situation with no ethics involved, like abortion.

I'm not certain of Mr. Wong's original intentions, as he did mention a double-murder charge but made no disclaimer that his argument does not carry things quite that far. In any case, it is an important distinction to make in regards to this argument.

[Edit: In one place, 'current' should have read 'past'; fixed.]

[Winston Blake]

If a woman knows she's pregnant but hasn't decided to abort, then she's effectively keeping the baby. This is not the kind of decision that you can simply postpone indefinitely; it sort of makes itself if you don't. As for the totally unknown pregnancy, I see no reason why anyone should consider it in sentencing.

Maybe instead of assigning an undecided woman's fetus the same value as that of a nonaborting woman's, the idea of value based on promises could mean it has an inbetween value. The undecided woman could be considered to be promising to retain the right to decide at a later date, the same way such a term might be included in a financial contract. This particular promise could then be less valuable than the nonaborting woman's, so the fetus is of less, but nonzero, value.

Now Zero's point about the difference in value placed on the eventual outcome of an undecided vs an unaware woman is simple: the unaware woman has no current promise, so the fetus has no current value.

It's probably worth noting that the only possible eventual outcome of the unaware woman is that she becomes an undecided woman (hard not to notice after a while), not that the fetus is born or dies. So for future discussion, it'd be a matter of intermediate vs zero value rather than full vs zero value.

[Faqa]

A good deal of complex values discussion that seems to miss the essential point here - the choice is only uncriminal when the woman does it. The potential-child is biologically dependant on her utterly to survive, and therefore she has rights over it others do not. It is an extension of her body, until such a time as it can develop some level of sentience.

None of this applies to an outside force. They have no such rights, they have no ethical control. Ergo, they are killing a potential child, because they took the choice of the matter from the only person qualified to make it. A pregnant woman might still have made the choice of keeping the baby - you will never know, because you removed that possibility for good.

Kurenko's analogy is an excellent one - if someone steals diamonds you weren't aware of off your property, that's theft. If someone blows up the diamonds, they just took the choice of what to do with the diamonds away from the only person ethically qualified to dispose of them - you, the owner.

I reeeeeeeally hope some of this makes sense....

[SVPD]

It seems to me that it's irrelevant if the woman plans to abort or not.

Women can and do change their minds at the last minute. As such, even if the killer knew the woman was going to have an abortion, he could not know before the fact that she would go through with it.

In essence, the fetus is something that the killer has to assume will become a full human being at some point in the not-too-far future. Therefore, killing it without the consent of the mother (whether or not she dies) is murder, since the most likely end result if the killing does not occur is the birth of a healthy human child.

I'm not sure about if the woman doesn't know she's pregnant, but I would think it would be part of a duty of care to assume that there is a reasonable chane that a woman of child-bearing age could be pregnant even if it's not obvious.

It seems to me that the anti-abortion types are engaging in a stolen concept fallacy of trying to correlate destruction of another's fetus with abortion without the underlying concept of "consent" by the mother.

[Darth Wong]

It seems to me that it's irrelevant if the woman plans to abort or not.

Women can and do change their minds at the last minute. As such, even if the killer knew the woman was going to have an abortion, he could not know before the fact that she would go through with it.

I don't see how this is a problem for the financial analogy. Promissory notes are not considered as reliable as cash in terms of assets on the balance sheets; they occupy a space somewhere between nothing and cash in the bank, just as the fetus of a woman who plans to carry it to term occupies the same sort of "in-between" value. I'm only pointing out that the concept of this type of "future value" being taken into account does not necessarily force an anti-abortion conclusion.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

It's a good theory. I see two problems with implimenting it in practice though, along with one theorical one.

Practice

1. How does one establish the exact value of the fetus? I can certainly see this becoming a BIG point of debate between the pro/anti abortion crowds- with the anti-crowd pushing for the exact same value as a living person (or, at the very least, an extremely high value) to further their agenda while simultaneously demonising the pro-crowd for valueing "human life so low".

2. A murdered woman's intentions may not have been clear. This could lead to potential sentencing problems as the exact "value" of the fetus will not be established. Personally, I would solve this by making ambiguous cases have the highest possible for the fetus- murderous scum don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Theoretical

The valuation of the fetus, under the law, is based on a subjective standard that one may not be able to measure/establish. Let's use the following example- lets say a woman is raped and becomes comotose and pregnant as a result. The doctor, under advise from the family performs an abortion on the woman. When the woman wakes up she informs the authorities that she, for whatever reason (including, quite possibly, completely emotioal/irrational ones), that she wanted to carry the fetus to term. Under this situation the Doctor and family members could be charged with some varient of murder/manslaughter (with the sentence being determined by the value set on the fetus- a point raised above); and they would be guility not due to some objective fact- such as a certain point being reached in fetal development- but rather the subjective judgement of the woman in question which, as I just pointed out, could be completely irrational.

[Broomstick]

Of course you can't postpone it indefinitely but you're saying a woman who is undecided effectively has a default 'yes', derived from the fact that pregnancy will proceed on it's own unless you specifically act on a 'no'. However you ascribe a default 'no' to an unknown pregnancy, which will or course carry itself out just as the known one will.

In otherwords why the distinction based on knowledge of the potential?

Most miscarriages occur quite early in pregnancy, often before the woman is pregnant. Up to 50% of very early pregnancies fail in the natural course of things by most estimates.

So a very early pregnancy is less likely to continue than a later one no matter what occurs. If it's so early that the woman has no idea she's pregnant then there's only a 50/50 chance of a child being produced even without considering abortion. A couple months later, when the woman is sure she's pregnant, the odds are much more in favor of successful baby production.

So timing does have an effect on likelihood of baby occuring.

[Broomstick]

That does not follow. As an analogy, imagine that if you own land that happens to have a substantial deposit of diamond of which you are not aware. You become aware of it only after someone comes in without your permission, mines it out, and keeps it. Did a theft occur?

Under US law, yes, a theft occurred, unless your deed to the land specifically excludes mineral rights. Under US law you own the minerals under the surface of land you own whether you are aware of them or not.

[Broomstick]

Doesn't Mike's argument relating to future value still apply, though? I mean, if we don't actually know what the victim would have chosen in reguards to keeping the thing or aborting it, the potential value of the fetus is entirely unknown, so can it really be evaluated specifically as 0?

The existence of the fetus is entirely unknown. Ergo, its value is zero. In the context of the woman's rights and sovereignty over her body, she has nothing invested in something she's unaware of, financially or emotionally.

What if the woman was actively trying to get pregnant? What if she was undergoing treatment for infertility and thus, under those circumstances, we can pretty safely assume she would have kept any viable fetus? Under such circumstances there would be substantial emotional and even financial investment.

There are circumstances were a deceased woman's decision in regards to an unknown pregnancy can be determined with some degree of confidence. Would that sort of knowledge affect how you look at the situation?

[Broomstick]

Theoretical

The valuation of the fetus, under the law, is based on a subjective standard that one may not be able to measure/establish. Let's use the following example- lets say a woman is raped and becomes comotose and pregnant as a result. The doctor, under advise from the family performs an abortion on the woman. When the woman wakes up she informs the authorities that she, for whatever reason (including, quite possibly, completely emotioal/irrational ones), that she wanted to carry the fetus to term. Under this situation the Doctor and family members could be charged with some varient of murder/manslaughter (with the sentence being determined by the value set on the fetus- a point raised above); and they would be guility not due to some objective fact- such as a certain point being reached in fetal development- but rather the subjective judgement of the woman in question which, as I just pointed out, could be completely irrational.

Not a terribly good case - if the woman is comatose and the person legally enabled to speak on her behalf (either through prior arrangement such as power of attornery or through determination of the courts after the fact) makes this choice on her behalf I don't think you can bring in criminal charges. There is ample precendent for those with legal power of decision making withdrawing life support from people unable to communicate, and if such a person has power of life or death over the incapcitated then surely they have the legal authority to withdraw life support from a fetus (so to speak).

If she wakes up later and expresses regrets... well, she may be extermely unhappy but may also have no legal recourse.

[Darth Raptor]

What if the woman was actively trying to get pregnant? What if she was undergoing treatment for infertility and thus, under those circumstances, we can pretty safely assume she would have kept any viable fetus? Under such circumstances there would be substantial emotional and even financial investment.

In that case yes, absolutely. There most certainly would be.

There are circumstances were a deceased woman's decision in regards to an unknown pregnancy can be determined with some degree of confidence. Would that sort of knowledge affect how you look at the situation?

Yes, of course.