A while back a man living in my neck of the woods was charged with murdering his estranged lover who happened to be pregnant with, I believe, someone else's baby. The whole affair was both trashy and tragic. I normally don't pay much attention to these things, but I did happen to note that the man was charged with two murders: one for the woman and one for the unborn child. While I'd be perfectly fine if they just hung him up in the town square and be done with it, the whole thing does raise some interesting legal questions.
The accused was charged with infanticide by the state of Missouri. If Missouri wants to view the killing of a fetus as murder I can understand that. While laws are universal, we take extra care to try to protect those most in need of protection. Hitting a man is bad, hitting a woman is worse, and hitting a child is worst. What life is more helpless than an unborn baby? It's perfectly natural that we would impose a harsher penalty for killing a pregnant woman. It's hard to imagine a society that didn't seek to protect pregnant women. There would hardly be a point to it.
And yet, the Supreme Court of the United States has declared that the fetus is not a human life with legal rights, but an extension of the woman's body, of which the woman has sovereign authority. By extension of the ruling (and it's a crap ruling) the fetus should never be considered a human life with legal rights. Thus Missouri's decision to charge double murders is unConstitutional. We don't count other body parts as individual murders. He wasn't charged with murdering her pancreas or her liver, so why should the fetal body part be any different?
The legal incongruence remains because no one is really going to challenge this in court. Conservatives won't challenge it because their opposition to abortion is primarily one of fetal human rights, so they won't do anything to further reduce them. And liberals won't challenge them because they would never reduce the punishment for any attack on a woman. The fetus is a shield to offer increased legal protection to women. This is naturally infuriating to us, because they are willing to grant and revoke fetal legal rights as it becomes personally convenient. Infuriating, but not surprising, as the left operates without principle. Supposedly their core principle is to make life fair and equal for everyone, but in practice their core principles are treason and sabotage. This can be seen clearly in their victim hierarchy. Fetuses rank lower than women. And women rank lower than Muslims. If their ethos really was to protect the most vulnerable, the hierarchy is inverted. So it can't be true. However, if the principle was to protect whoever was subverting society, then the hierarchy makes sense. Women get protected because they are seen as victims fighting oppressive patriarchy. Muslims get even more protection because they are seen as fighting oppressive western civilization. Fetuses don't fight anyone so they don't get any protections.
While letting liberals have what they want feels unnatural, I would advise that our current situation is the best we can practically hope for regarding fetal rights. The thing to keep in mind is that most of the people having abortions are liberals. Sure they should be practicing safe sex and all of that, but they don't. And they won't. Let's not pretend they will. Abortion is the one thing in this country putting positive Darwinian pressure on the gene pool. Some people draw a moral line against abortion they cannot cross, but for the rest of us there is a pragmatic stance.
While I'm highly disgusted at women who get routine abortions in lieu of responsible behavior, I like having it there as an option. It's easy to be an anti-abortion zealot until your sweet little fifteen-year-old gets knocked up by some loser. Yes, good parenting should help prevent that, but kids are dumb and make mistakes. In our current situation, your unborn child has legal protections from predation, you can help bail little Susie out if she makes a potentially disastrous mistake, and liberal reproduction is reduced by about a million per year. It might be a dirty deal, but it's the best deal we're going to get.
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