A state law written to protect unborn babies.

[Pah]

Texas Police News - the complete article

Killing a child in its mother's womb is a capital crime in Texas and across the nation. But that’s only if the death fits the crime, according to new federal and state laws.

Those laws now recognize unborn children as "individuals." Human individuals — alive from the moment of fertilization — now have full rights to protection from criminal assault. Raise a hand to kill a pregnant woman, and you're raising it against her unborn baby, too, according to the law.

And on the federal level:

President George Bush in April signed into law the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, making it a crime to kill or injure an unborn child during an attack on the mother during a federal or military crime.

The act is known as "Laci and Conner's Law," named for Laci Peterson and her unborn son. Scott Peterson, Laci's husband, is on trial in California on charges he killed his eight-months-pregnant wife in 2002 and dumped her body into a bay. Remains of Laci and her son were later recovered after washing up onto shore.

Federal law does not require prosecutors to prove a person charged with the crime knew a woman was pregnant or intended to harm the unborn child.

The law [Texas law] leaves potential prosecution of mothers and medical staff wide open in other events that stop short of a child's death, such as injury or endangerment, according to some members of prosecution and defense.

If a mother intentionally kills her unborn child, she is safe from prosecution, they say. If the child is born alive but injured, she could be prosecuted.

The definition of an unborn child as an individual is not contained within the penal code's murder section. It is defined separately and applied within the state's murder definition.

In the religious uncompromising zeal of many to confer "personhood" on the product of conception and any and all stages through birth, idiotic law is being passed.

Previously, a drunk driver who killed an unborn child in a car accident was not prosecuted for the death. Now those drivers can be charged with murder. If the same wreck killed the baby's mother, the drunk driver would be charged with manslaughter in her death.

Such is the reach of a policy based primarily on faith.

-pah-

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

So, to avoid the effects of "uncompomising zeal", it would help if we all knew and understood the criteria for determining when a human becomes a person?

 

[Pah]

So, to avoid the effects of "uncompomising zeal", it would help if we all knew and understood the criteria for determining when a human becomes a person?

I looked for a beginning to that discussion in your response thinking that if you felt it should be brought up, you might lead it off.

But even aside from that determination there seems to be logical inconsistencies in the thinking that went into passing the law - wouldn't you say?

-pah-

 

[DrM]

According to the bible, a life becomes a life when God breathes the breath of life into him, as he did with the soul of Adam.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

According to the bible, a life becomes a life when God breathes the breath of life into him, as he did with the soul of Adam.

At issue is not "the breath of life" but, rather, the point at which the 'life' becomes a person. A very interesting discussion of this, and one which touches upon Jewish Halakah vs the early Christian (and Aristotelian) concept of delayed ensoullment, can be found here.