Woman miscarries after car accident, charged with murder

[Scooter]

No, it hasn't happened yet, but it is clearly where we are headed unless we stop this path of exalting a fetus as form of life with rights superior to all others:

A Pregnant Woman in Alabama Was Shot in the Stomach. Police Charged Her for Her Baby’s Death.

An Alabama woman has been arrested and charged with manslaughter over the fatal shooting of her unborn child — but she didn’t fire the gun that ended her pregnancy.

Now, reproductive health advocates worry what those charges mean for women in a state where abortion has been severely restricted and fetuses have been given legal standing.

The mother, Marshae Jones, 27, was indicted by a Jefferson County grand jury Wednesday, according to AL.com. The manslaughter charge against her stems from an altercation outside of a Dollar General in 2018, when Jones was five months pregnant. She and a 23-year-old woman allegedly fought about the unborn baby’s father. It’s unclear who started the altercation, but police ultimately blamed Jones, who was shot in the stomach.

Police filed manslaughter charges against the shooter, Ebony Jemison, but the charge was later dismissed by a grand jury. Police have said she was defending herself against Jones, who’s being held on a $50,000 bond.

“When a five-months-pregnant woman initiates a fight and attacks another person, I believe some responsibility lies with her as to any injury to her unborn child,’’ Pleasant Grove Police Lt. Danny Reid told AL.com in December. “That child is dependent on its mother to try to keep it from harm, and she shouldn’t seek out unnecessary physical altercations.”

Advocates are concerned that the charges against Jones run dangerously close to a legal theory of “fetal personhood” or granting full legal rights and protections to an unborn child.

Alabama lawmakers have already embraced the concept of “fetal personhood” and based the state’s near-total ban on abortions (not yet in effect) on the concept earlier this year. Alabama was also the first state to enshrine fetal personhood in its constitution, and an Alabama judge allowed an aborted fetus to sue the clinic that performed the procedure in March.

Similarly, county sheriffs across Alabama regularly arrest women for “chemical endangerment of a child,” or using drugs while pregnant.

“Marshae Jones is being charged with manslaughter for being pregnant and getting shot while engaging in an altercation with a person who had a gun. Tomorrow, it will be another black woman, maybe for having a drink while pregnant. And after that, another, for not obtaining adequate prenatal care,” Amanda Reyes, executive director of the reproductive health nonprofit Yellowhammer Fund, said in a statement to AL.com.

The Yellowhammer Fund and other abortion rights groups worry Jones’ arrest could end up hindering access to reproductive care. The fund, which helps women pay for reproductive health services, said Alabama had shown it “considers any act a pregnant person takes that might impede in that live birth to be a criminal act.”

It's a small step from this to every miscarriage being investigated as a homicide. We are turning back the clock to a time when no pregnant woman would dare emerge in public, because any harm that comes to what she is incubating will send her to prison.

[Gob]

De-evolution at work...

[Big RR]

I'm not sure, but I think it has been settled law (since before abortion that a fetus killed during the committing of a crime could be charged with murder/manslaughter, but I do not recall the mother being charged in this way. perhaps someone else knows--BSG?

[Lord Jim]

I think it has been settled law (since before abortion that a fetus killed during the committing of a crime could be charged with murder/manslaughter

I'm pretty sure there are a number of states where that is the case.

[Crackpot]

I just want to know how the shooter isn’t charged

[Scooter]

The law in Canada allows such charges in cases where a baby is born alive and subsequently dies due to injuries sustained in utero, which I think derives from British common law. I can see the justification for extending that to include death of a fetus caused by the actions of third parties, but to boomerang such charges back onto the woman herself? The mindset that would countenance such an absurdity is a product of the right's determination to subject women to gestational slavery.

I alluded to the logical extension of the legal philosophy behind such charges in the thread's title. Are we prepared to accept charging a woman with vehicular manslaughter if, as a result of running a stop sign, she is t-boned and miscarries? That's just fucked up.

I just want to know how the shooter isn’t charged

I'm guessing they determined that she was acting in self-defence as the other woman instigated the altercation. Again, fucked up because I can't see how she would have been in fear for her life or anything else that would justify deadly force.

[Crackpot]

Self defense does not absolve a one of unintended consequences of ones actions.

[Scooter]

Again, I have to wonder whether this was more about pushing a fetus-as-person narrative than it was about the actual facts of the case.

[Crackpot]

I’d disagree fetus as a person would have the shooter charged for killing an uninvolved party. This is flat out misogyny.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Self defense does not absolve a one of unintended consequences of ones actions.

I agree that it shouldn't but it appears that the police believe that she (the shooter) was acting in self defense. Everything else flows from that. I suppose that had Trayvon Martin lived, once Zimmerman got off, he (Martin) would have been charged with assault, at least.

Meanwhile we see Wayne LaPierre at NRA possibly losing his job because he bought himself a few suits on the company dime. In my view that's the least of his sins against the human race in the last 20 years. But I have to admit that if I see LaPierre and Oliver North fighting it out, I'm content to stand back.