Re: Jonathan Kraut, “Who Owns the Body of a Woman?” (Aug. 9).
As I have pointed out in previous articles, a baby in her womb is NOT part of the woman’s body (you will notice I did not and will not use the term “birthing person”). That’s not my opinion, that is a scientific/biological fact. Look it up for yourself.
Even the ultra-left-wing liberal state that we reside in considers a baby in the womb as a separate person when it comes to certain crimes such as murder and battery on a pregnant woman.
Way back in 1994, the California Supreme Court ruled in a 6-1 decision to allow prosecutors to charge a defendant with murder for causing a pregnant woman to miscarry, even if her fetus had been only 7 to 8 weeks old and incapable of surviving outside her womb.
CALCRIM 520 (California Criminal Jury Instructions) defines a fetus as “an unborn human being that has progressed beyond the embryonic stage, which occurs at approximately seven to eight weeks of development.”
If a pregnant woman is murdered and the baby in her womb also dies, the California Fetal Homicide Law states that it does not matter if the fetus was viable or if the killer knew the woman was pregnant. The California courts have in the past required at least seven to eight weeks after fertilization in order for these statutes to apply, but this is not the law, it is just the average past practices of district attorneys and judges when charging and sentencing the person who murdered the pregnant woman and her unborn child.
I am a real big fan of consistency of thought and action, and in my experience those two things seldom if ever are practiced by either side on “hot-button” issues like abortion. I’m also a big fan of separating “facts” from “opinions.” As the old saying goes: opinions are like a certain body orifice… everybody has one!
Fact: A living human being is created at the moment that the female egg is fertilized by the male sperm. We can debate and argue over what we want to call that fertilized egg, but the fact that it is alive is beyond debate. It is simply a biological fact, period, end of story.
Rick Barker
Valencia
