A man who beat his pregnant girlfriend so badly that he killed her has been sentenced to 36 years in jail– 16 for killing the woman, and 20 for killing the fetus.
She was only two months pregnant.
Anyone want to tell me now that our country doesn’t value embryos more than women? Killing an embryo– the legal result of the 20-something percent of pregnancies that end in first-trimester abortion– is worth 20 years in jail. The woman that was fully grown and conscious and beaten so severely that she died of brain damage, only 16. For killing a 2 month old embryo, this guy got almost as many years in jail as this woman was alive before he murdered her.
Hey, maybe from now on when men are tried for killing their girlfriends and wives, their lawyers can argue that it’s not that big of a deal, since the woman was already born and all. Our legal system is already horribly biased in the favor of victims, and we need to fix that. The Poor Mens can’t even beat their wives without ending up in court anymore!
I’m going to go puke, now.
{ 33 comments }
Well, it’s not like we didn’t know before this sentencing that women are worthless in the eyes of the law. Gang rape would not be de facto legal if we were, in the eyes of patriarchical law, anything more than sex toys. Murdering a living, breathing woman would not be considered less of a crime than the incidental death of a fetus if we were considered to be humans instead of incubators.
sweet jesus. this is disgusting.
It’s just sick that he got a shorter sentence for the woman’s death. But I don’t really equate a man beating a woman so badly that she miscarries with abortion. Abortion is safe and legal and not the result of violence and the woman’s choice. Beating an embryo out of someone is not nearly the same. I think the revision of that state law is a good thing, because we do know that men sometimes beat women so badly that the women miscarry, but don’t die themselves. And we want to be very careful not to let that be legal.
Oh I definitely agree. But still, in that case, unless the pregnancy was VERY far along into the third trimester, I would want the punishment to be for the way that he severely beat the woman. Yes, an extra sentence should be given because of the fact that he caused her to miscarry and that would likely involve extreme emotional distress, aside from the physical beating. But again, that is because of the way that he impacted and injured the woman.
But the sentence was for killing the embryo/fetus. Not for beating the woman. The point I was trying to make is that the law sees a woman’s life as worth less than the potential life she had inside her, which is perfectly legal to “kill” under certain circumstances. This was NOT one of those circumstances, but it’s still completely fucked up if you look at it from that perspective.
I feel bad about not being surprised. People seem to care way more about fetuses than they will ever actually care about live human beings, like human life is incredibly sacred and important until it’s born.
A hypothetical question: If I were pregnant, in the early stages, and did something which caused me to miscarry, would I be guilty of manslaughter?
Seems stupid doesn’t it, but the way things are going, it might not be so stupid in the future.
There’s nothing saying that the fetus wasn’t a female. I really can’t believe that you’d get upset because the woman got him sentenced to fewer years in prison than the fetus. It’s not a competition and you should be ashamed of yourselves for thinking so. All this proves is that she lived in a country that was sentimental about fetuses, nothing else. He’d have gotten the same 16 years if he killed another man, and don’t try to rebuke that. However you look at it, women are the same as men in the eyes of the law, in North America, at least. There would be just as many judges to pass quick judgment on a man as there would be a woman. What good is pointing out sexism where sexism was never meant to, and now doesn’t, exist? The feminist war is no longer for social equality, it’s for superiority. While I advocated for your cause when it was due, I can’t help but feel disgusted by your cheap tactics today.
Any future comments that you post here, David, will be deleted. I’m leaving this one up to demonstrate your utter stupidity.
“It’s not a competition and you should be ashamed of yourselves for thinking so.”
yeah! how dare you dumb bitches think that your life is at least as important as someone who hasn’t been born yet and relies on your body to survive! How DARE you go thinking you have a right to consider yourself more than an incubator!
“While I advocated for your cause when it was due, I can’t help but feel disgusted by your cheap tactics today.”
Translation: If you bitches don’t do and say what I want I won’t support you and then where will you be? huh?
Fuck you Davidpoo.
Fetus isn’t involved in the actual context of the court case, the phrasing they use for that is ‘unborn child’.
I bring only it up because I don’t see how valuing a child’s life more than a living person is in anyway immoral. Children don’t have free will. This child can’t decide his or her environment at all. That seems more cruel than a woman who, according to the fine staff at the The Arizona Republic, was warned against this guys nature.
Now before anyone gets up my ass, I don’t condone beating a woman, regardless if it’s a slap or to death. Thats not what this is about. I’m saying in this particular instance the destruction of this child’s life, regardless of the pregnancy’s progression, is a worse crime.
I simply can’t see how that effects an overall feeling of the value of a life before it is actually viable or not (assuming thats how we’re deciding it, which is what the Supreme court decided last time I checked).
It just seems like this particular case has no effect on a womans right to terminate a pregnancy.
That said I’ll say I’m pro-choice, and agree with most of the Feminist view-point, I just think it’s important to critically think about this kind of stuff before you go overboard. If you’re on the team thats down you’ve gotta play smart to get back up there, ya know? Sorry for the sports analogy.
Wow. I live in Phoenix, and it is just so conservative out here. Yes, well of course the woman is only worth 16 years . . .
Joe, I work in the legal field. “Unborn child” is the conservative legal substitute for “fetus.” Were this a liberal paper, they would’ve chosen to say fetus, but the AZ Republic is conservative. I don’t really understand your point since these two phrases mean the same thing, outside of the fact that they indicate political preference.
As for choosing an environment, well the woman didn’t exactly choose to be killed and was naive about her situation. Why should she take blame? You don’t know her situation enough to make that claim. As for children choosing environment, how should that effect the sentence for a fetus dying from the mother being cruely murdered? Why should a 2 month old fetus be more important than the woman? Very little development has occurred at that point. Miscarriage possibilities are very high. The woman wouldn’t even have been showing yet.
Are you insuating she chose to be beaten? Although I would agree she made bad choices, you should be careful of your argument because you are making her guilty of a situation in which she fell victim. Fine, maybe you think a child’s life is more important than a mother’s, and I suppose you consider a 2 month fetus to be enough to constitute a child. Fine, that is your opinion, but do not seek to make the mother guilty!
Life is not fair, but to narrow a case down to a shallow factor of “choosing an environment” is ridiculous. Choosing an environment plays no legal role whatsoever in the sentencing of criminals, as it shouldn’t. Should we hold a woman accountable for being murdered because she chose to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Yes, it is a naive and very bad decision, but hardly worth holding one responsible.
The focus is suppose to be on the hideous crime that was committed – murdering a woman. Being pregnant should add extra years to the sentence, but to make that fetus MORE valuable than the woman in terms of sentencing is, not only unnecessary, but almost a political statement on the court’s behalf.
Before you accuse others of not thinking critically, you should take your own advice. And also, you should be sorry, the sports analogy was awful and irrelevant. Your status on abortion is also irrelevant. Whether or not you support abortion adds nothing to your argument.
David, read the above. It seems you have no knowledge of the political system and the law.Furthermore, you show absolutely no skills whatsoever in critical thinking. This has nothing to do with a woman and man having equal sentencing. This ultimately goes to the controversy of abortion. In other states, the penalty for killing a fetus would not necessarily be held HIGHER than a penalty for killing a woman. The court is to stay out of political matters because it is not the legislature. The court made a clear political decision by choosing to make the life sentence harsher for killing a fetus than the woman.
Just to clarify my argument, the reason this is an abortion issue, per say, is that the court decided to consider the fetus a child, which was made clear by making the sentence harsher for the fetus dying. Yes, abortion is about choice, but it also centers around the argument of when a life beings. Is a 2 month old fetus a child? If the law will punish this heavily for killing a 2 month old fetus, how do the abortion laws stand? (As for beating a woman to near death to kill the fetus, but not the woman, this would actually be fully covered in the law as this would be physical assault and would probably get an attempted murder charge, in my opinion.It would be difficult to make this hypothetical near death legal because of the assault on the woman’s body. Unless the law suddenly says it’s ok to beat a woman to near death, pregnant or not.)
The courts decision reflects its belief on abortion because it decided that killing a two month fetus was a crime almost as severe as killing a child. That it was a crime worse than killing a woman. (The very harsh laws on harming children result, rightfully so, from child abuse issues.Thus, the law defines that it is a worse crime to kill a defenseless child than an adult. This I agree with. What I do not agree with is putting a 2 month fetus akin to child status.)
I actually had to take a legal class on the philosophy of criminal law, which delved into topics like this. Sorry if I sound like I am repeating myself, but I am used to having to clarify and support all of my arguments, as well as countering opposing arguments. Anyway, it’s late, and I have insomnia. Good morning! lol
“I bring only it up because I don’t see how valuing a child’s life more than a living person is in anyway immoral.”
Translation: because women aren’t human beings – not REAL humans like men, anyway – so of course murdering a woman isn’t like a crime, not a REAL crime anyway.
“Now before anyone gets up my ass, I don’t condone beating a woman,”
Quick! Someone get Joe a cookie! He doesn’t value women, but you know, they shouldn’t be beaten. Brings down their resale value.
“I’m saying in this particular instance the destruction of this child’s life, regardless of the pregnancy’s progression, is a worse crime.”
Wait, withhold the cookie. The worse crime is the death of the child, not the LIVING BREATHING WOMAN WHO ACTUALLY FELT THE PAIN.
“That said I’ll say I’m pro-choice, and agree with most of the Feminist view-point, I just think it’s important to critically think about this kind of stuff before you go overboard.”
Translation: You bitches are silly and hyperemotional. You can’t think critically about this because you have no penis. I’m a big manly man and therefore are so much more logical. So do as I say!
Goddamn I hate misogynists. Ignorant, privledged, clueless and yet they NEVER stop babbling.
Oooh, missed this part:
“That seems more cruel than a woman who, according to the fine staff at the The Arizona Republic, was warned against this guys nature.”
SO you know, the woman was just ASKING to be murdered.
Thanks Fatima and Lya.
As for you, Joe, you get the same message as David. Show up here again spouting bullshit about how it’s a woman’s own fault when her boyfriend beats her, or about how an embryo/fetus (it’s borderline area. I’m not sure if she was before or past the 8 week mark) is worth more than the woman carrying it, and your comments will be deleted.
“I’m saying in this particular instance the destruction of this child’s life, regardless of the pregnancy’s progression, is a worse crime.”
This sentence cancels out all semblance of intelligent thought and fair reasoning in the rest of Joe’s post. Anyone who thinks that killing a fetus is actually, literally, worse than murdering a grown woman in cold blood has a problem and I have a very, very hard time keeping my cool with them.
“This sentence cancels out all semblance of intelligent thought and fair reasoning in the rest of Joe’s post. Anyone who thinks that killing a fetus is actually, literally, worse than murdering a grown woman in cold blood has a problem and I have a very, very hard time keeping my cool with them.”
Me too, as it probably very obvious. It really struck me how callous and hateful that statement is.
From the article: “Jorge Mario Gurrola, 25, was found guilty by jurors in January of striking his pregnant girlfriend, Monica Sanchez, 21, in Mesa, causing her to suffer brain damage that eventually led to her death.” She was two months pregnant at the time.
This woman was BEATEN TO DEATH. And Joe (and David, for that matter) is saying that Monica Sanchez – the woman who felt the fear, fought back, felt the pain of repeated blows until she lost her life is LESS important that the contents of her uterus.
That is a level of misogyny I have not confronted before.
And what’s worse, i’ll bet you my right leg that Joe doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with that statement.
Boys like Joe and David scare me. They speak calmly and dispassionately while they devalue women to the point where their brutual murders are not as bad a crime as the incidental termination of a pregnancy. I wonder if these are the same guys planting pipe bombs at women’s clinics or shooting doctors.
And I hope they stay far FAR away from all women at all times.
This issue is so multifaceted, and yet so clearly decidable. My knee jerk reaction is to side with the living and not so much the fetus. No one has the right to cause anyone physical harm– let alone take someone’s life; and I find it repugnant that a woman’s enmtire life could be worth only 16 years of another person’s life in prison.
On it’s own merit, regardless of the value one places on a two-month old fetus, a woman’s life is certainly worth locking up the offender for the rest of his life. If life is to be valued above all else, then how do you come up with a finite annualized sentence?
The value of the fetus is a second crime, in that it’s “potential” to be a sentient being was taken without the mother’s choice. At that early stage, the fetus (1) would not be able to survive on its own, (2) have any cognitive abilities, and (3) was not “born”… which is the traditional line-in-the-sand litmus test for living– and that’s been the test used for however long people have been on this planet. A century ago, you were born or you weren’t. Today, we can use scopes and cameras to investigate how large sonny’s penis is at only two month’ in a woman’s vagina; so with this knowledge (we just can’t help ourselves, now) we feel compelled to say that a fetus is a human being.
No. It’s not, It’s a tadpole.
In the eyes of our ubber-neocon courts, people receive compensation for injuries based on being robbed of their future earnings potential if they loose their sight or ability to be productive. And yet, it’s preposterous that the actual life of an adult– her “earnings potential,” and her ability to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is compared to that of the two month old fetus (not a person, but a fetus). To me, the ability to live happily, freely and with liberty is what makes life valuable in the first place. A life of pain and suffering, ailments and dementia is no endurable life to many of us (but that’s a choice one should be able to make on one’s one)… and we should be free to end our life if we want to. No one has that right to make that decision for you (violently or nonviolently).
The multifaceted aspect of this discussion, in my opinion (and I know there are many of you out there who will find this theory troubling) is that while LIFE is to be valued more than any other thing, as a religious society, we try to value life in a very bazaar way– completely out of touch with reality. Life on Mars. Life on Mercury. Water on Jupiter. And 2 million species below the surface of the ocean, etc.
Why? Because the miracle of life is actually not a miracle at all. Given water and a hospitable climate, life will flourish. The number of species that lives on this planet is staggering. Life will grow if not checked, and yet in 2007 we still have the audacity to say that human life is rooted in god’s will. In my left hand I hold a bone of a dinosaur dating back some 2 million years. I have physical proof of that and many other scientifically provable laws of nature and the validity of what was and what is. In my other hand I hold Jesus’s… well, I don’t hold anything of Jesus. We’ve got no proof that there was Jesus. And so on and on it goes… the disbelief in science and the strong belief in make-believe. The one thing I do know about religion is: It’s comfort food. (1) it’s good to feel as if you’re part of a group; (2) it’s easy to answer all your problems by making them god’s will; (3) we feel comfortable not thinking for ourselves (just look at those that thought the world was flat for so long, or believed that a golden statue was a god). People believed it then, and still believe it now.
So, how does this relate to a woman’s value vis a vis a 2 month old fetus? Easy. Men make the rules Religious teachings crawl into our legal system with total disregard for the fair and equitable truth. The bible demeans women regardless which version. The Koran does too. Without exception, every religious manual diminishes a woman’s value. And we find it difficult to see why this happened?
Even in today’s day and age, men and women believe in Santa Claus, the immaculate conception, and the rights of an embryo (and yet not the rights of an Iraqi)… but will stone a woman to death for disrespecting her family or in-laws in India. Inequality is as prevalent as life itself.
Should it therefore be tolerated? No. Common sense for the common man should be the law of the land.
I look at this and think to a time when feminism was called a revolution. Thisman got off with a 30-some-year sentence for beating a woman to death, and on top of that, killing a fetus. That’s outrageous enough to me! That a grown man would attack a pregnant woman, that a man isn’t really held responsible for this act of hate, is rediculous.
Why aren’t we revolting as a gender, as a people, to fight against this kind of injustice? When are we going to really stand up to the system instead of ranting on blogs and spouting feminism to the feminists? When women stand up and speak out for change, for a real feminism, with actions and a true revolutionary spirit, only then can change come.
We still don’t get equal wages, and the gap is getting larger, even accounting for differences in career choices among men and women. Conservatives and religious types still fight against our right to our own bodies!
We’re never going to stop this with a majority of men in charge, with a ranting feminism, with a victimized attitude. When are we going to be a real voice for women, who make up a majority of this country?
I only wish I could see it in my lifetime; that some change could be made, that we could really be viewed as more than silly, emotional incubators, pleasure-toys, and victims.
I’ve worked hard for respect, rights and dignity, but I see that being pulled away every day by those in power. I see more media looking down on women. “Bitches and hos” is all I hear about women in today’s society, and that speaks of the equality we haven’t earned yet, that speaks strongly of what we need to change.
First of I just want to say that you that you all dont know Jorge Gurrola! I went to school with this idiot and always had a bad temper. He was VERY controlling and will beat up his girlfriends. This man needs to be sentence to life. I know this idiot meant to kill my friend!!! Monica was trying to come back home with her daughter and her lil one. Jorge has always been a violent person it runs in his family as well as he has several of records down back home for beating up his ex girlfriend as well as family violence.I can go on forever but this doesnt make a difference. MY FRIEND DID NOT ASK TO BE MURDERED LYA KHLO DUMBASS!! YOU DONT EVEN KNOW MONICA SO KEEP YOUR CRUEL COMMENTS TO YOURSELF!!!!!!!!
Um . . . Lya didn’t say anything even remotely offensive. She was, in fact, rather upset at the misogynist men on this post who were insinuating that this woman deserved what she got, and that her life was not worth as much as her embryo. So. No clue what you’re going on about.
Girls, I think there is a point where being feminist is as bad as being malist. Me, AS A WOMAN, feel scared and horrified of all the hatred that some women have against men, specialy Lya Kahlo… MEN AND WOMEN ARE EQUAL, in soul, emotions and legal rights…
In the particular case of the trial… he should’ve gotten 40 years, 20 for each life taken NO LIFE HAS MORE VALUE THAN OTHER!!!
Carmen, I think that you’ve missed the point about ten times over.
And personally, I feel a lot more frightened by the fact that men beat women to death on a daily basis than I do by Lya’s disgust over that fact.
I am not trying to spark any hate or any hard feelings from anyone here. I hate the fact that there is still disrespect to women in the world. I hate the fact that some men beat up women.Of course some women beat up men as well. I am pro-choice for abortion as i feel it is soley the womans choice. Ok, so the guy got more for killing the fetus than the woman Monica, which I can understand sounds a lttle daft, and probably upset the family and friends of Monica. But Monica had chosen to keep that fetus, which would eventually have been her child. That fetus was a part of Monica, it was her miracle. Some women through various reasons cannot have children. I am just saying that I am glad the bastard is in jail! Let him rot there! I hope Monicas family and friends find a way to continue with their lives as this asshole took Monica away from them. I respect all of your comments on this site, this is just my opinion. I mean no harm.
I actually agree with most of what you said, Scarlet. I think that everyone here agrees that violently causing a woman’s miscarriage is a crime. And we all definitely believe that this man should be in jail for a very long time. Where we have the problem is the fact that in this case, a human life that didn’t quite exist yet got more notice and disapproval than the fact that a full-grown woman with hopes and dreams and who apparently wanted to have a baby was murdered.
I believe that this is a continuation of the people who congregate outside Planned Parenthood in hopes of accosting young women who are attempting to be responsible for their actions. Let me also say that going to Planned Parenthood is not just about getting abortions. I wish people didn’t associate such an awesome service with that and that alone – they do much, much more.
These same people are the disapproving fuckheads who will later shake their heads and make tsk-tsk noises when they see teenagers pushing baby carriages.
These people – the Planned Parenthood protesters and the people responsible for sentencing this man – don’t really value human life at all. They value the helplessness of fetuses (is that the correct plural?!) but they’ll abhor the screaming child who’s throwing cereal boxes in the supermarket, three years later. They’ll tell you that they wish YOU’D been aborted and have no concept of their statement’s irony.
I’ll say it again because I think it gets at the issue: they value the helplessness of the fetus and they are scared of their own lack of power over the woman who carries the fetus. They attempt to legislate that power into existence.
Often, I think they are also frightened of the process by which the fetus came to exist – sex – because their sexually fucked up brains picture an assortment of both enjoyable and awful sexual circumstances. To “the establishment”, all forms of sex aside from that of the married, hetero variety are unacceptable. However, as we see from Republican senators and congressmen over and over again, they’re often rather obsessed with varieties of sex that aren’t… erm… WEREN’T taught in middle school Health. The circumstances that brought about women’s pregnancies, wanted or unwanted, freak them out. Hot sex! With or without the will of God! And they had no power to stop it! They have to deify the pregnancy, legislate it and control it because they couldn’t control the act that created it.
That deification of pregnancy, the romantic obsession with a fetus’ helplessness and the disrespect for women that has already been covered all combine to come up with these rather arbitrary figures of 16 and 20. You know what else is vaguely interesting? At eight weeks, my mother didn’t even know she was pregnant with me.
This is far more than I meant to write. Thanks for reading.
Thanks for your comment, Alexandra. You’ve made some interesting points!
That is ridicules! I think because there is such a big stink about abortion and a fetus bing alive that the government is worried more about how it would look to give him less for the baby then the mother.
Hey I’m happy they gave him something for the baby, but killing his girlfriend should have gotten him more then 16 years. I say life in prison would be better, and I mean life, not the “they will be out in 5 years thing” the system does.
Hi. I think this discussion is fantastic.
Do you think that the jury would have given him less years if he had beat the baby after it was already born?
Also, if he had beat the baby and the woman separately, after it was already born, should he have gotten more or less years overall?
I wonder if the jury realized that it was treating women in an unjust and unequal way when it decided on the sentence.
Bonus question. If it had been an old man and a baby girl that he beat to death, which death should have carried the heavier sentence?
Also, if you were on the titanic, would it be women and children first? Or children first, then men, then women? I don’t know. Somehow it seemed relevant.
See, I’m just really confused about the hierarchy of value you’re alluding to here.
Why is a life more valuable because it’s been alive longer, or if it’s not, why not?
Because a fetus, though it is “alive” in the most basic sense, is not born. And thank god, in this country we still do not give rights to the unborn. Abortion, though you may hate your personal rights enough to wish otherwise, is still legal.
But you’re cute. Really. I love it when people think that they can out-clever me without actually making an argument. It’s fun.
Well, I didn’t say anything about abortion. But if I have to, I’ll say that there are good enough reasons not to make it illegal.
My question was not about rights, it was about the value of life. How can we make determinations about the value of a life without being unfair?
A fetus is alive in the biological sense. And, a fetus is a human being, albeit in its earliest stages of development. This wasn’t your point but I felt that if I’m going to talk about fetuses I should address this. Trying to redefine human life so that it doesn’t include the human fetus is trickery.
The human fetus is in fact a human being. If we choose to end the life of the fetus, we end a human life. The only value to redefining life as beginning at birth, or in the third trimester, is the psychological value of being able to abort without feeling the guilt normally associated with ending a human life. I don’t know if it’s wrong, but I know why people argue for it being right.
We give full fledged rights to a baby once it’s born, that is a matter of fact. But it’s not a reason. The fetus depends for its life on the mother, but that doesn’t necessarily confer any rights on the mother over the fate of the fetus. It gives the mother power over that life, but not absolute moral authority.
Anyway, I’m sincerely interested in trying to understand the reasonable limits of our ability to measure the value of human life, and although I found the spirit of this discussion repulsive, I thought there were some interesting comments.
The fetus is in fact human. Whether or not it is a human being with all of the rights that infers is a matter rather up to debate. Abortion is very relevant. I do not think that it is right kill someone else’s fetus, because that involves harming the body of a woman, and because many women are emotionally attached to their fetuses. But I do not think that killing an early term fetus that is living off of your body is wrong in any sense. A young fetus does not have any of the mental capabilities that we associate with being human. The difference between “human” (my arm is human, my hair follicles are human) and a “human being” is consciousness. There is absolutely no evidence that an early term fetus has consciousness.
And even if it did, that would not give it the right to live off of a woman as a parasite against her will. I fully respect the right of women to have children and think that it’s absolutely great for women who want to. But it lives off of a woman’s body. Intelligent women who want to be pregnant recognize that much. I am under no moral obligation to let anything feed off my body and drastically change my life for 9 months. Period.
A woman does get moral authority because it’s her body. You can judge it all you like, but that doesn’t make it immoral. People judge others for lots of things that aren’t immoral, and questions of what is and is not moral is different for everyone.
The point here is that we are comparing a woman with a life, with friends, family, consciousness and a future, to an 8 week old embryo that has less brain activity than most small animals and certainly less physical function. It is smaller than my thumb and could very easily be flushed out of my system naturally. Yes, I do value my own life and the life of my friends and family and some guy walking down the street that I’ve never met before more than something than my uterus is capable of killing. Quite honestly, I value my cat and most other animals more.
And if you don’t like that, it’s fine. It doesn’t bother me. You can hate me for it, go right ahead. When the embryo is in your body, you get to make that choice and I would respect it as much as I respect a woman who chooses to have an abortion. That’s what being pro-choice is about.
But when it comes to the legal system, we have a set of rules. And those rules coincide with the majority opinion of our society, that born human beings are more valuable than an unborn fetus that could not live outside of the womb. I am extremely thankful for that and hope that it never changes.
It’s interesting, though, that as someone who thinks that all human life is equal, whether an embryo or a full grown adult, you don’t have a problem that the “murder” of the embryo got a harsher sentence than the murder of the woman. If you truly do value all human life equally, shouldn’t you be angry that the judge ruled one as more important than the other? I never said that there should have been no sentence for killing the woman’s embryo, so why aren’t you outraged along with us? Seems like a bit of intellectual dishonesty to me.
I have to say that I am just as appalled now to read this as I was when I first saw it. In general, I cannot view a fetus/embryo that is not in any way viable as commensurate with a woman. Now, you start talking about something like that Peterson case, sure-that baby was viable-that could be considered additional murder charges. But for a fetus that is incapable of surviving without the environment of mother, and is actually just as likely to spontaneously abort-there is a reason people don’t tell until the 2nd trimester-I just can’t see that as not just equalling the murder of a 21 year old woman. I am not a fan of abortion, but I certainly am prochoice. I want there to be less need. Education, contraception, and power for women is what can prevent abortion. Not laws.
-Ren
To make matters worse, Monica ( the woman he beat) was my close friend, and now the SOB is appealing his sentence which was repulsive to begin with, because he claims he wasn’t fairly tried.
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