*Congress deems fetus separate victim
Fetuses of any age are now a step closer to being considered people.
WASHINGTON, March 25 — The Senate approved legislation on Thursday making it a separate offense to harm the fetus in a federal crime committed against a pregnant woman, sending the measure to President Bush for his signature.
Opponents denounced the bill, adopted on a vote of 61 to 38, as an effort to undermine the constitutional right to abortion by recognizing the fetus as a person.
The House passed the measure on Feb. 26, 254 to 163.
The putative point of the legislation is be able to prosecute perpetrators of violent crimes against women twice if the women are pregnant when they are violated. The real point of the legislation is to give a fetus separate standing from the woman carrying it. That is, of course, the fundamental requirement for deeming abortion murder. If the fetus is a person, the individuals responsible for terminating a pregnancy, both the pregnant woman and the doctor, are as guilty of murder as the perpetrator of a homicide with a gun or knife.
The anti-abortion forces have a long way to go before they can impose that perspective on the populace. This legislation, called Unborn Victims of Violence Act, is a step down that road. Coupled with the ban on late term abortions, it shows us where we can expect to go in regard to the right to abortion if George W. Bush is reelected.
Opponents of the proposal, while saying they sympathized with the desire to severely punish anyone who would attack pregnant women, said they were troubled by the definition of the "child in utero" covered under the bill as "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and others said they believed that once that definition was written into federal law it would ultimately be used as an argument to overturn existing laws protecting abortion rights.
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, likely Democrat nominee for the presidential race, voted against the bill.
*Partial birth abortion case begins Monday
Samantha Blackmon, at Dr. B's Blog, has been following the Bush administration's determined efforts to pry information about women who have had late term abortions from hospitals. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who is deeply opposed to abortion, has not left a stone unturned in his quest. Samantha muses about the issue at Blog Sisters.
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Article comments
1 - Ms. Tek
Maybe I am mis-understanding something here so could you please clarify?
Even if the names are blacked out, isn't getting the medical records of people no matter what procedure they had an invasion to a right to privacy and goes against the various laws about medical record privacy?
2 - Mac Diva
Bingo, Vic! You're on the money.
The Bush administration says it needs their medical records to make sure the women who had late term abortions in the pass really, really, really needed them.
The hospitals and their allies say that even with names blacked out, it is possible to determine who people are. We Web heads know that. Give a few facts about a person and we just might figure out who he or she is, name known or not. (In fact, Judge Posner specifically said a determined person might be able to Google the identities of the women in those records.)
The experts in late term abortion can tell the courts what there is to know about it. But, most of them will say it is a safe and sometimes necessary procedure. That is not what the Bush administration wants to happen. In addition, I believe Ashcroft is out to intimidate women who have had abortions and who might have abortions in the future. The 'show us your scarlet letter' demand is an effective form of intimidation. Having people who understand late term abortion testify and present supporting evidence is not.
3 - Ms. Tek
Okay, so why can't some group get together and sue Ashcroft and whomever for getting their hands on those records in the first. If they were not released by the patients themselves then someone broke the law and needs to be procecuted.
GRRRR... I wish men could get pregnant. This would be a non-issue then!
4 - bhw
This is a scary precedent. I know the subpeona is in the context of a court case, but you know where it will lead: eventually, Ashcroft will want to see the records of any clinic/doctor who performs these types of abortions. He will say he "just wants to make sure the abortions really were medically necessary [aka, legal]."
This type of snooping does not exist for any other legal activity. Probable cause is the name of the game. There are lots of legal activities that can be performed illegally, like writing prescriptions or using a legally owned gun. But that doesn't give the government the right to go around checking up on people and looking at their private records/behavior "just to make sure" they're not using a legal right in an illegal way. They have to have a reason to suspect the law was broken. The mere ability to break a law isn't a reason, because we're all able to break laws each and every day.