Is it Murder?
According to current laws, women have the right to choose to
have an abortion. To some this means that the fetus has no
rights as a human being until it’s born. The controversial issue
is that an assault committed on pregnant women, which causes
death of her unborn fetus, is considered murder.
The Penal Code sec 187 makes it possible for someone who kills a
pregnant women to be charged for two murders not just one. In a
recent case of People versus Taylor ; Taylor assaulted his
girlfriend who was 7 months pregnant. He said “I don’t want this
baby” So he punched her repeatedly in the stomach.
This caused the baby to be born prematurely and later died from
complications. Taylor was then charged with first degree murder
of his baby.
The argument was that Taylor assaulted his girlfriend, not the
unborn baby. The baby was not considered a human being until his
premature birth which caused his death, not the assault. There
is definitely a grey area in the laws, in which it could be
interpreted a number of ways.
In a recent case, Scott Peterson, a 30-year-old fertilizer
salesman, was charged with two accounts of murder for the
mysterious disappearance and death of his wife and unborn
child. His wife, Laci Peterson, was eight months pregnant when
she went missing December 24, 2003. They later discovered that
Scott had dumped her body into the ocean and told her family and
police detectives that she had simply vanished from their home.
In the meantime he had a mistress, Amber Frey, whom later came
out to speak against Scott. That April the body of Laci and
her then born baby washed upon shore just a few miles away from
the marina where Scott was said to be fishing that Dec. 24.
The district attorney has said he intends to seek the death
penalty.
So why if a man kills a pregnant woman it is two accounts of
murder, whereas, when a women gets an abortion it is nothing
more than
