What an interesting post from Feministing.com. When you ask a question that parallels a life question....they get all hung up and slip up and say baby. Whoops, did not mean to say baby.... look at the comment from the reader....
Death Penalty and Abortion
In a bioethics class I'm taking, we were talking about the death penalty, and the discussion progressed to include abortion. Someone raised the question: "If a woman on death row happened to get pregnant, should we still execute her?"I'm pro-choice, and support embryonic stem cell research. But, my gut instinct to the question was "No, of course you can't kill her baby!" Then I realized the inherent inconsistency there- in the other cases, I don't think of the embryo as a baby. I'm not sure how to rectify this.So, what do you think? What if the woman was 8 weeks pregnant? 8 months?Note: I'm against the death penalty in all cases, but that's another discussion entirely.
Posted by orgostrich - March 18, 2009, at 09:06AM in Deep Thoughts
miki_mouse said:
I definitely agree that if a pregnant woman is killed, it is only one count of murder under the law, because a fetus does not have the same rights as a human being. That said, we do place some value on a fetus, and if that woman (on death row) wanted that baby to live, I don't think we have the right to kill her while she is still pregnant. Same as if we forced a woman to have an abortion, it is still wrong even though it is right if she wants the abortion. People wait for years on death row, I think it would be simple enough that if she wanted the baby to live, to just stay her execution for a couple months after she gives birth.
miki_mouse replied to miki_mouse :
I didn't really mean to call it a baby in the last sentence. I meant if she wanted the fetus to be born so it could turn into a baby, of course.
Of course!
Death Penalty and Abortion
In a bioethics class I'm taking, we were talking about the death penalty, and the discussion progressed to include abortion. Someone raised the question: "If a woman on death row happened to get pregnant, should we still execute her?"I'm pro-choice, and support embryonic stem cell research. But, my gut instinct to the question was "No, of course you can't kill her baby!" Then I realized the inherent inconsistency there- in the other cases, I don't think of the embryo as a baby. I'm not sure how to rectify this.So, what do you think? What if the woman was 8 weeks pregnant? 8 months?Note: I'm against the death penalty in all cases, but that's another discussion entirely.
Posted by orgostrich - March 18, 2009, at 09:06AM in Deep Thoughts
miki_mouse said:
I definitely agree that if a pregnant woman is killed, it is only one count of murder under the law, because a fetus does not have the same rights as a human being. That said, we do place some value on a fetus, and if that woman (on death row) wanted that baby to live, I don't think we have the right to kill her while she is still pregnant. Same as if we forced a woman to have an abortion, it is still wrong even though it is right if she wants the abortion. People wait for years on death row, I think it would be simple enough that if she wanted the baby to live, to just stay her execution for a couple months after she gives birth.
miki_mouse replied to miki_mouse :
I didn't really mean to call it a baby in the last sentence. I meant if she wanted the fetus to be born so it could turn into a baby, of course.
Of course!
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