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Can Someone Murder an Unborn Child?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
If someone murders a pregnant woman, thus killing both mother and unborn child, should that person face double-murder charges?
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when a mother miscarries they often don't give the 'child' a burial as its not considered a viable life form, though mothers are given the choice if they want to buty them!
Technically though I don't think they bother prosecting for a double murder.
You are a very bad man.
If a baby is classed as a life in one instance, it cannot be classed as otherwise in another.
It depends on how one defines life. Is a foetus alive?
Yes, but so is your average bacteria. Defining murder as the pre-meditated exinguishing of life means that the average doctor is guilty of millions upon millions of counts of murder every time he prescribes antibiotics to a patient. What matters is not whether we classify the foetus as alive, but whether we think of it as fully human from the moment of conception. This will obviously depend on our definition of human. Is a human defined as an animal with a certain DNA sequence, or do we need to bring sapience into the definition?
The question of whether a foetus is alive is to determine if its yet classed as human.
Is it really?
Is there any absolute definition of life?
I'm not sure what the legal position is, but I don't believe anyone would get an additional count of murder for unborn children.
As I understand things, the legal position is that a person isn't alive until after birth - which would be the point at which the person would need to be "registered". Registration of borth is the moment that the Govt recgnises a person's "existence"...
That was exactly my point
Murder is generally defined as the deliberate, pre-meditated killing of a human being. This obviously requires a good definition of human being. So when does a child become a human being, in your opinion? Is it immediately post conception, at birth, when the child achieves self-awareness, or something else altogether? If a foetus is alive, do you automatically class it as human? That's the real question here. As I asked earlier, do you define someone as human based purely on their DNA sequence?
That's going to depend on whether you just mean life, or whether you want consciousness thrown in as well. Life could be defined as a self propagating chemical reaction built around a few basic nucleotides. Under this definition, a foetus is indeed alive. But that's not the point. If I kill another life form (a cow, for instance), it is not murder. Murder only applies to the killing of humans, and therefore the question of whether a foetus is alive is substantially less relevant than the question of whether and when it is classified as human. As I asked in my previous post, is there a good defintion of human? If so, please point it out to me.
I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not sure about this, but can a precedent such as this be retroactively enforced? Wouldn't it only make it illegal for people to have abortions in future, rather than criminalising all those who have previously had abortions?
Still unacceptable.
Current Charges
More statutes
Precidents
Consider this scenario. An 8th month pregnant woman is shot by someone intending to kill her and the baby. Because of medical treatment, the adult victim survives but the child dies. Is it murder? I think I would call it such. Seems at least some states in the United States would agree.