What Next?

Hm. Just read a most interesting article….

Woman Convicted of Killing Her Fetus
A woman was convicted Wednesday and sentenced to 12 years in prison for killing her unborn child by using crack cocaine during her pregnancy.
The verdict marks the first time a woman in the United States has been found guilty of homicide for taking drugs during pregnancy, an advocate for the defendant claimed.
The case also opens the door for prosecutors to charge women with neglect under other conditions, such as smoking during pregnancy, said Wyndi Anderson, executive director of the South Carolina Advocates for Pregnant Women.
A jury found Regina McKnight, 24, guilty after deliberating just 15 minutes. She could have faced a life sentence. McKnight`s lawyers said they will appeal.
The state Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that a viable fetus is considered a child and mothers can be charged with abuse if they took drugs after their unborn child was able to live outside the womb.
McKnight`s baby was stillborn in 1999 at 35 weeks. She is the mother of three other children and is two months pregnant.
``The state needed to press forward because a child ended up dead,` prosecutor Bert von Herrmann said. ``She smoked cocaine as much and as often as she could ... if that`s not extreme indifference to life, I don`t know what is.`
But defense attorney Orrie West said the brief deliberations indicate the jury punished McKnight because she was a drug addict.
``Given almost all of the trial involved complex medical testimony, I don`t think the jury weighed it like they should,` West said.
The defense said an inflammation of the placenta, which could have at least two causes other than drug use, killed the fetus.
This was McKnight`s second trial; a mistrial was declared in January after two jurors used the Internet to look up medical information.



Now…if she was convicted of this, how soon will someone convict of woman who has had an abortion of killing her fetus? *sighs* I know that in this trial, it was a ‘viable’ fetus, but lawyers are good at using whatever they can. It’s just things like this that make me nervous.
It reminds me of a book I once read called Gibbon’s Decline and Fall by Sheri Tepper, about how there is a growing Immaculate Conception attitude developing about women’s bodies when it comes to pregnancy. The IC attitude was basically defined as viewing women as only vessel to hold the Divine Sperm, and once that sperm was in them, no matter what, they were destined to become mothers, no matter how inappropriate it my have been for them to be expected to be mothers. Furthermore, once the child was born, the mother was no longer quite as important, only the child mattered.
It comes to a point where there is a dangerously fine line between expecting women to take responsibility for the results of their actions, and granting them the freedom to try and prevent themselves from making an even bigger mistake.
Not every woman who gets pregnant is ready, willing or able to be a mother. That is a simple fact of human psychology and biology. Forcing anyone to become a mother, or penalizing anyone who chooses not to be a mother can end up with a child being forcibly placed into an abusive situation. *sighs*
Did you know that there are Christian groups who are protesting the use of birth control pills because they can allow conception, but prevent implantation? In other words, they view the pill as a very very very early abortion. *sighs*
There are times when it feels like being a sexually independent woman is a right that ‘some people’ are slowly trying to chip away…yet you hear so little about sexually responsible men. Hm. Makes you wonder.
Stay Jazzed.