Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Double standards
A Michigan teen has been charged with intentional conduct against a pregnant individual resulting in miscarriage or stillbirth, a felony, for "terminating" his girlfriend's "fetus."
OK, maybe I'm stupid, but there are a couple of things that really bother me about this case. First, I can't figure out for the life of me why this is a crime, much less a reprehensible one. Instead of taking body shots for a couple of weeks, the girl could have popped down to her local Planned Parenthood (another great oxymoron) with the same results, and the doctor not only would have not been committing a crime, he would have been paid for his "assistance." It can't be the violence. I've never heard of a law that forbids you from punching a consenting person in the stomach. Hell, I don't think anyone in Michigan would give a fig if I paid this idiot kid $300 to take a couple of weeks' worth of pot shots at me. It can't be the fetus. It wasn't viable and so it couldn't be considered a person, right? So if the girl consented to being punched in the stomach, and the only thing that happened was the loss of some meaningless cells, why is the boy looking at serious jail time?
Second, if this crime is so heinous, then why is the girl walking while the boy is sent up the river without a tackle box? She clearly made the same choice as the boy did with the same intent and achieved the same result, so why the free pass? Notice, the article quoted above states that the "youths," plural, intentionally caused the "death," not just the boy.
It seems to me that the good folks in Michigan are seeking to have it both ways. They want to pay fealty to some notion that what the girl did was just a "choice" and not a killing, yet they want to punish her boyfriend for causing the death of a fetus. The Supreme Court has told them what the girl did is merely a privacy issue, yet the Michiganders clearly know that something wrong happened here and want someone to pay. I guess that's what happens when you rationalize around the truth.
According to Michigan State Police detectives, the youths intentionally caused the death of the fetus by striking the mother's abdomen with the twenty-two inch bat over the course of two weeks. The parents of the youths were apparently unaware of the pregnancy and the decision to abort it.The article goes on to state that the 16-year old boy will be charged as a juvenile and could be sent to jail for up to 15 years. In fact, the prosecutor has stated that there will be no plea bargain due to the "shocking and reprehensible" nature of the crime. Despite this, the complicit girlfriend will not be charged.
OK, maybe I'm stupid, but there are a couple of things that really bother me about this case. First, I can't figure out for the life of me why this is a crime, much less a reprehensible one. Instead of taking body shots for a couple of weeks, the girl could have popped down to her local Planned Parenthood (another great oxymoron) with the same results, and the doctor not only would have not been committing a crime, he would have been paid for his "assistance." It can't be the violence. I've never heard of a law that forbids you from punching a consenting person in the stomach. Hell, I don't think anyone in Michigan would give a fig if I paid this idiot kid $300 to take a couple of weeks' worth of pot shots at me. It can't be the fetus. It wasn't viable and so it couldn't be considered a person, right? So if the girl consented to being punched in the stomach, and the only thing that happened was the loss of some meaningless cells, why is the boy looking at serious jail time?
Second, if this crime is so heinous, then why is the girl walking while the boy is sent up the river without a tackle box? She clearly made the same choice as the boy did with the same intent and achieved the same result, so why the free pass? Notice, the article quoted above states that the "youths," plural, intentionally caused the "death," not just the boy.
It seems to me that the good folks in Michigan are seeking to have it both ways. They want to pay fealty to some notion that what the girl did was just a "choice" and not a killing, yet they want to punish her boyfriend for causing the death of a fetus. The Supreme Court has told them what the girl did is merely a privacy issue, yet the Michiganders clearly know that something wrong happened here and want someone to pay. I guess that's what happens when you rationalize around the truth.
Centinel 4:21 PM #