Lindsay Beyerstein points to this dreadful story:
The would-be teen mother arrived by ambulance last May, her belly bruised, the twin fetuses she carried for five months gone and her lips tightly sealed.
Authorities assumed 16-year-old Erica Basoria had been beaten and charged her boyfriend, 18-year-old Gerardo “Jerry” Flores, with murder under the state’s new law protecting the unborn.
But it wasn’t that simple. Basoria told authorities she had been trying to kill the fetuses for weeks and finally asked Flores to help by stepping on her stomach.
“When I was four months pregnant, I began to show, and at that time I decided that I should have gotten an abortion,” Basoria wrote in an affidavit.
Although Flores faces prosecution, Basoria can’t be charged because the new law – like many others across the nation – bans prosecution of mothers on the grounds that they have a legal right to end pregnancies. The case has attorneys on both sides questioning the fairness of a statute that considers one person’s crime another person’s constitutional right.
“How can two people conspire to do something like this and only one of them be punished? How can that be fair?” defense attorney Ryan Deaton asked.
I agree. They both should be charged with something, perhaps not capital murder. I am nominally pro-choice, but this is absolutely disgusting. I am sure the choice at all costs crowd finds this distressing, but if someone is going to be a test-case for this legislation, these two scumbags are as good a candidate as any.
And no, I am not going to consider their circumstances. Jumping up and down on twin fetuses inside the belly of a pregnant woman is beyond the pale.
Kimmitt
Not by way of excuse, but a tiny bit by way of explanation, the closest abortion clinic to Lufkin appears to be in Houston, approximately 120 miles away.
That said, man, I don’t even know.
Al Maviva
John, not to over-lawyer this, but it seems to me that it matters little how the fetuses were removed. (Gotta stick with pro-choice jargon here if I’m going to argue that side of the argument).
The point of the manslaughter/murder laws as they apply to fertilized eggs / pre-born fetuses is that it’s about the mother’s choice, er, the pregnant individual’s choice. Anybody who denies the pregnant individual their choice, commits a crime. Abortion without consent would thus be an assault on the mother (unconsented touching) and manslaughter or murder of the fetus. If consented killing, er, removing of fetuses was in any way wrong, it would be criminalized.
Since it’s a great social good (even though we’re all working to keep it safe, rare and legal), a good thing we all love, fetus removal services are not illegal. It’s when you remove the fetus without the, um, pregnant individual’s consent; or if you force the pregnant individual to carry to term without the pregnant individual’s consent, that you run into trouble with the law.
It’s all about the mommy, John. The Fetus’s preferences don’t figure into it. That should help you understand the law in this area.
So, back to the facts, because this improvisational fetus removal was done with the full consent and apparent choice of the mother, it should be completely legal.
And please don’t argue the brutality angle. Fetuses get chopped up into little pieces and removed from the mother as late as 9 months into the pregnancy; or in the case of so-called partial birth abortion, they get pulled most of the way out out of the mother, have a hole cut in the base of their skull, and have their brains sucked out before their remains are thrown in a trash can and shipped off to the dump.
Now let’s talk about how we’re going to do some therepuetic cloning, fertilizing embryos, letting the grow to a certain state, and then grind ’em up to get the good stuff out…
Van Helsing
Is a baby a human being before it’s born or isn’t it? The issue is only complicated because we won’t admit that it’s simple.
The Sanity Inspector
The trouble with the nuanced approach is that the acceptable criteria have a seamless gradation into the unacceptable stuff. Hard to know where to draw the line, when it’s going to be all zig-zaggy.
Religious minded culture warriors might find this article rewarding:
The Revenge of Conscience
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9806/articles/budziszewski.html
Ken Hahn
If you want to be pro-choice then you cannot escape sonsequences like this. Either life begins at birth and no crime of any sort occurred or it begins at conception and both of them are murderers. Any other line is at best a guess and at worst an invitation to begin declaring other not human.
Abortion, like slavery, debases its practitioners and drains the humanity from its defenders. Flores did nothing that abortion doctors don’t do, he just did it with less finesse.
maha
You’re leaving out the part of the story in which the boyfriend’s mother discouraged the girl from getting an abortion in a clinic. The girl panicked once she got into the fourth month. We don’t know what family dynamics were going on here, but it’s possible if the girl had gotten counseling from someone outside the family, this tragedy would have been prevented.
What these two young people did was heinous, but it’s also standard in places where abortion is illegal. Women also terminate pregnancies by inserting sharp objects into themselves and flushing their wombs with caustic chemicals. If you’d like to see more of such behavior, just outlaw abortion.
The right wing likes to pretend that teens won’t have sex if you don’t tell them about birth control, and that women won’t get abortions if they’re illegal. Both ideas are nonsense. One of the reasons I’m pro-choice is to prevent stories like this one from becoming more commonplace in America.
syn
Medea must be proud of this young female’s power.
Sanger’s (planned parenthood founder) plan all along was to design, through abortion, the perfect society.
When the day comes that a ‘homosexual’ gene is proven legitimate, watch how quickly the tides will turn against those who believe abortion is an acceptable form of birth control and a basic right to female empowerment.
And, when that day comes will homosexuals support NOW’s billion dollar abortion powerhouse industry?
When gay’s are systematically exterminated in the womb because the females do not want to have gay children, how will progressive minded people justify abortion?
That said, one would think that Western feminists would at the very least be against China’s practice of aborting only the females.
Al Maviva
Thanks Maha for that bit of perspective.
You’ve won me over.
I will stop opposing abortion in any form, and stop letting people talk about opposing it, because opposition to abortion caused the girl to ask her boyfriend to stomp on her stomach.
Just like video games cause robberies.
bkny
jeez, imagine if sex education had been available for these two when they were younger. yessirree that ol abstinence program sure is mighty successful.
M. Scott Eiland
jeez, imagine if sex education had been available for these two when they were younger.
You mean, available for two people brilliant enough to view “stomping on her abdomen until the fetuses come tumbling out”? Yeah–I’m sure that they were completely mentally competent to use birth control correctly. I’m pro-choice, but the excuses being made for this conduct are pathetic.
M. Scott Eiland
Hmmm–add “as a viable substitute for a surgical abortion” after “. . .tumbling out.”
S.W. Anderson
Mr. Flores by all means should be prosecuted for felonious assault. I don’t care whether his underage paramour asked him to do it or not. Would we excuse him for robbing a bank because, say, a teller put him up to it? Of course not. What Flores did was wrong and he had to know it was wrong.
Maybe there should be a law against abortion by bodily harm, defining bodily harm as using means and methods clearly not of a kind or quality consistent with medical and surgical procedures carried out by qualified care providers.
As for the 16-year-old post gravida female, maybe God was watching out for the unborn. I think we have a clue here about how well prepared she is to raise children. I don’t think it takes a crystal ball to look into the future and have a pretty good idea what her offspring would be like by the time they were teenagers.
S.W. Anderson
“The right wing likes to pretend that teens won’t have sex if you don’t tell them about birth control, and that women won’t get abortions if they’re illegal. Both ideas are nonsense.”
Well said, except you could substitute “needs” for “likes,” because any conscientious person who grasps that this is the reality is hard put to keep insisting on nonsense.
Kimmitt
Mr. Flores by all means should be prosecuted for felonious assault.
No complaining witness — good luck on that prosecution.
derek
Is a baby a human being before it’s born or isn’t it? The issue is only complicated because we won’t admit that it’s simple.
Bingo. People will always try to hide behind the mask that is the ‘grey area’ of human conception.
Ervin
I think it is wrong to think that anyone sees abortions as a good thing. That is, I would question the sanity of anyone who does not want to minimize if not eliminate abortions, left or right.
Which is why it IS relevant that this happened in an “abstinence-only” state. Forgetting the comments of M. Scott who assumes that stupid acts taken by a minor out of desperation mean he or she is incapable of learning, imagine if these children had been better educated about condoms and had access to birth control. No unwanted pregnancy, no chance to commit an atrocious act.
Unfortunately, anti-abortion enthusiasts would rather paint themselves on a fake high ground by pretending that pro-abortionists love killing fetuses. We don’t, but laws that merely prohibit abortion are sexist, especially when we deny minors access to birth control and education about condoms.
Also, does anyone reading this remember what it’s like to be 16? How small your world is? At 16 many have never even bought food for themselves, much less thought about feeding another human. I think the circumstances of age are very relevant, especially when taken in conjunction with the lack of realistic sex education in Texas.
And finally, we must remember that laws against abortion, making abortions more difficult, making birth control less available, etc. are unfair because they apply only to females for something they have no control over. If you are anti-abortion, where is your outcry for laws making dead-beat dads pay up, for holding the male just as accountable as the female (especially since he was probably the one pressuring her to have sex)? Women are people who can and may even want to have sex. They just happen to also be people born with the ability to carry a child to birth. Laws that limit you for something beyond your control (skin color, gender, physical ability) are inherently unfair.
Hipocrite
I don’t know why the anti-choice crowd is all up in arms over this. Isn’t this the America you guys want, where you can’t get a safe, legal and rare abortion, and people are prosecuted for coathanger and traumatic abortions. I mean, you’ve said over and over that you don’t want the mother prosecuted no matter what, just the abortion provider. This is a perfect picture of what the anti-choice crowd wants America to be. Faster please!
Sav
“And finally, we must remember that laws against abortion, making abortions more difficult, making birth control less available, etc. are unfair because they apply only to females for something they have no control over.”
Women have no control over their bodies in terms of sexual contact? Or aren’t capable of making sound decisions? That’s a bit condescending, no?
By the way, how fair is it to the developing baby to have no self-defense against its death? Just out of curiosity.
syn
Why call it pro-choice when it is called abortion?
The ‘sophisticated’ culture treats dogs with far more dignity and respect than how this culture treats babies in the womb. If a dog were beaten to death in the manner these teens treated the baby, PETA would be raising hell.
So, if I say I am PRO-CHOICE in beating my dog to death, my cause is legitmate because it is my choice to do so?
That said, if one CHOOSES to support exterminating the baby in the womb as a viable means towards fulfilling personal desires then that ideology will soon find itself exterminated. In a generation or two from now, the political powerhouse behind the promotion of abortion will have aborted all it’s political power.
Another thing, condoms are rarely used by those who have easy access to and knowledge of condoms let alone those who have no access or knowledge of condoms, so that argument does not hold up to reality. According to the 2004 WHO report, the number of women with AIDS in the US alone has tripled over the last 20 years. Women now account for 26% of cases, girls between 13 and 19(57%) make up the majority of news AIDS cases among their age group and AIDS is now the fourth-leading cause of death for all 25- to 44-year-old women in the US. In other words, condoms are not being used.
Unfortunately, since the billion dollar abortion industry will not disclose vital information about abortion, we can only estimate the number of abortions over the past three decades to be at around 40 million, nor are we able to understand the emotional and physical consequences abortion has on the female. As a female, I consider this restriction of information to be a form of human rights abuse.
Why won’t the billion dollar abortion industry design a condom which does not interfere with the sensitivity factor instead of relinquishing all reproductive responsibilities to females. Instead of simply advocating for condom education or abortion, why not advocate for better condoms so females can be protected from abortion and AIDS?
When it comes to reproductive responsibilities, females do not have a ‘choice’ at all, we are forced to make ALL the decisions whether we are educated or uneducated, rich or poor, married or single, young or old. Women are fighting for a form of empowerment which is ultimately a form of oppression we bring upon ourselves.
The radical feminist movement in the 1970’s deconstructed the womb only to fill the vagina with disease. Abortion is an unspoken form of dis-ease not only upon the individual but upon society as a whole.
Aaron
I think I have to agree with hipocrite here.
I’d suggest a middle path (which is probably already taken) that the clinics have counseling etc.
You can’t stop idiots like those in the story, but you could provide alternatives to the people actually able to find a clinic and not rely on foot stompin.
Sav
Sucking the baby out is so much more cultured than stompin.
Bob
So this double fetus-killing took place in a RED STATE?
mike
The pair of would be parent idiots makes me sick to my stomach.
J Bowen
Why is stomping on the fetuses inside Mom so much worse than the usual methods of tearing them apart et al? Is it that it wasn’t safe enough for the mother? Protecting abortionists from competition?
IMO the real outrage is how the women have the power of life and death here, but just try to get Dad out of child support. Surely failing to support a kid is less heinous than killing it, especially when adoption is available.
In LA there have been cases where men have been forced to pay support for kids when they’ve never even met the mothers, much less sired the kid. Look it up on my site if you’re interested.
Jimmie
Let’s charge them with Malicious Destruction of Property. After all, it’s not a person, it’s a “thing” that only has value as property (because, heck, that’s something that could have been used for cloning research or somesuch).
If we’re going to nanny-state these kids and we also assume that what was “killed” wasn’t a human being, then that’s pretty much the only option open to us.
Don
Charge the boyfriend with practicing medicine without a license. Only makes sense, because intentionally killing babies is what the abortion doctors do…so what’s the difference?
Kimmitt
Let’s charge them with Malicious Destruction of Property.
Again, no complaining witness.
Hard cases make bad law. If you want less of this, allow doctors to use RU-486 and join Democrats in the fight to make abortion safe, legal and rare.
Lilly
Charge the slimy little bastard with reckless endangerment or the like. The girl could have easily died from maternal hemmorage or something equally lethal. Not that I would be sobbing over the selfish little wench who decided to kill her children when it dawned on her her belly was going to grow.