Interesting case unfolding in the UK/Laos – a pregnant woman facing the death penalty for drug smuggling. I mean, it’s tragic rather than interesting, but people’s reactions are interesting:
Ronke Oseni, 21, a psychology student at Kingston University, has known Orobator for 11 years… She said: “There is no one there to visit her, no one to talk to, she doesn’t speak the language. I’m really scared for her. I can’t even imagine what she’s going through.
“The punishment does not fit the crime. They want to shoot her but what about the baby?”
Would it be unjust for the baby to die with her, supposing she is guilty?
Supporters of abortion: do you feel like this would be unjust? (Be honest – what is your gut reaction?) Why/why not?
The baby is within the legal term for an abortion – in fact, if she was back in the UK the government would pay for it. It looks like she may be a rape victim. The baby is no less innocent than any other aborted baby.
In related news, Craig Carter observes that doctors performed a heart procedure on a fetus inside the womb to save the baby’s life … yet the mother would still have been legally able to kill it for a month afterwards!
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If you’re stupid enough to smuggle drugs in a country that hands down the death sentence you’re most likely too stupid to raise a child. And if she’s a drug user too the “baby” is probably developementally retarded.
What would YOU do? Let the mother go free without consequences or wait til she has the kid and THEN shoot her?
Personally, gut reaction, I’d wait til she had the kid *if* someone wants to raise it, someone other than the state. Then by all means shoot her in the face.
Unless of course she doesn’t WANT the rape baby – then don’t worry about the wait.
I have no sympathy for people who smuggle drugs in countries with the death penalty.
Actually, I wouldn’t shoot the mother or the baby… but that’s just me.
Oh, there would be consequences.
But why would you wait till she had birthed the kid?
(and that question is not meant to be a general rhetorical question. I mean why do you say that?
Because I’m pro-CHOICE. That choice shouldn’t be up to the government UNLESS the “mother” is in danger or has a severe mental disorder. Or is in a coma.
So if she WANTS the child – wait. CHOICE, see?
You’re misrepresenting your dissenters from the get-go, Hayesy. Nobody I know is universally “pro-abortion”, because that position is ludicrous.
An abortion if nothing else represents lost potential, so there had better be a major reason to do it. Sometimes there is, and there is a hard decision to be made. That decision belongs primarily to those closest to it with working brains, usually the parents. That’s what “pro-choice” means.
This Laotian case is a potential FORCED abortion. It’s against the principles of both pro-life and pro-choice. Just who would you expect to support it?
Looking at it from another angle, this woman is six months along, and Carter’s Canadian case was eight months. I wouldn’t support the abortion of either baby outside of extreme circumstances, because it’s obvious that there is a complete baby there. Either one could be born prematurely at its moment of crisis and survive.
Understand that sometimes being pro-choice means choosing not to abort, and that’s true here. That’s not inconsistency, it’s consideration of the situation at hand.
The UK woman’s pregnancy is most likely the result of prison rape, as the article goes on to say. If because of that or anything else she had decided to abort, and been able to, we’d all hope she would have had it done immediately before the developing embryo/zygote/blastocyst was able to feel pain and therefore suffer. She’s well beyond that point now. That makes this situation even worse.