Teen Guilty of Fetal Murder

Sorry, teeny.

I'm actually unsure which particular elements of this story people are reacting badly to -- there are like five distinct parts to be depressed about. Verdictwise I was going to be pretty much unupset if the kid had done this without the cooperation of the girlfriend -- "non-consensual abortion" is pretty unholy from any political perspective -- but as it stands, the story boils down to the same "back-alley" scenario that can be seen as a pretty good reason for keeping proper abortion available, affordable, safe, etc.

A blogger contextualizes this as:

In 2003, Texas passed an anti-abortion law that instituted a 24-hour waiting period; required doctors to show women pictures of fetuses, tell them about adoption procedures, and warn them that an abortion could lead to breast cancer; and forced abortion providers to keep the identities of all their patients in their records. And one more thing, as the Fort Worth Weekly reported at the time:

The bill as passed also includes another requirement that managed to escape the floodlights of controversy and debate: Abortions from 16 weeks onward now can be performed only in hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers.

The clause is a major Catch-22. Very few Texas hospitals perform elective abortions, and the few that do charge extremely high fees and require that the patients go through complicated ethics reviews. And of the state's hundreds of surgical centers, none performs abortions.

So, with no place to get an abortion after 16 weeks, what does a panicky, 17-year-old girl do if she's four months pregnant? Erica Basoria decided to try to induce a miscarriage. When that didn't work, she asked her boyfriend to step on her stomach. A week later she miscarried.

Whether the unavailability of abortion services was due to that law in this case, I don't really know, but presumably this girl would not do this if a safe affordable abortion was available.

That aside, I doubt this decision will stand if it is appealed. Otherwise you could convict a man for driving his wife to an abortion clinic, or, for that matter, a doctor for performing abortions.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_06/006447.php

Under state law, a woman cannot be charged for causing the deaths of her own fetuses for any reason.

does this mean if she had been successful in causing the miscarriage by herself there would have been no trouble?

As far as I can tell: yes.

It's stories like this that make me really really hate America's justice system... Life sentence? LIFE SENTENCE?!??!??!! HE'S SEVENTEEN!!!!

I hate mandatory sentencing. I also hate most prosecutors. Slimy defense lawyers are so so much more respectable than preening power-hungry DAs.

-- caitlin oh no (caitx...), June 7th, 2005.'

NO!!! I just saw it last night! I didn't mean it like that!