June 07, 2005

• may i offer this pre-emptive cute kitten. please refer back to it in the ensuing heated discussion. thank you.
• Let me step into the breach. This was not a recognised medical practice, so whatever else it was, it was quackery. More than that, I can see and understand and sympathise with arguments on both sides. I'm going to hell!
• The defense said she hit herself at the same time, making it impossible to tell who killed the babies. Eventually, an appeal is going to win based solely on that. It's to bad that it's going to take that. State District Judge David Wilson on Monday morning denied Deaton's motions to include jury instruction on several other choices, including criminally-negligent homicide. Besides the activist judge, when a case relies on the jury being uninformed, it can't be a good one.
• I tend to agree, Skrik. These were young kids who were caught in a bad situation, then tried to solve things in a very stupid way. Perhaps the stupidest possible way. I'd be interested to hear how their families reacted to the pregnancy. Did they give the kids any options? Were the kids backed into a corner? (Not to remove all blame from the kids -- again, what they did was incredibly stupid -- but, especially when you're young, you can feel pushed into being drastic.) Also, I'm willing to bet there is a lack of legal abortion services near them. (A lack that exists in some 90% of US counties, I seem to remember reading.) As for the legal aspects... I don't know. Fetal murder laws seem awfully close to banning abortion to me, and it seems like they could have charged the guy with partner abuse or endangerment (what if she had gone sceptic?) if they were determined to charge him with something.
• Tragic. Education. Aah, it seems your pre-emtpive kitten may have worked for a while SideDish! Though I will add, the kitten's eyes put me in a trance of sorts... techsmith, it seems that you have set us up here - an initial warning, then an apology for the post, and finally the "loaded" statment.
• There are accepted methods for termination of pregnancy and there are ways of getting access, even if you can't afford it, but this was just not right.
• Clearly, what the kids did was wrong, but I'm not surprised that it happened, either. Even up in East Texas, they still won't criminalize abortion for the woman. But they'll criminalize assisting in termination for anyone else involved, whether they "help" by beating the girl until she miscarries or by taking her to a doctor where she could have an abortion. Probably the girl in this case could have gotten an abortion in Houston or Dallas/Ft. Worth, but I don't know if there's anywhere nearer that she could have had one. I wonder how long she had known she was pregnant and how much of an issue money was. Abortions aren't cheap, but neither is pregnancy.
• so, you can be charged with murder if you don't do it through the proper channels, i.e. a doctor? Life in prison for a home brewed abortion somehow doesn't quite jive with me.
• Under the traditional common-law definition, with regards to torts, anyway, one cannot be held liable for damages to a foetus until that foetus has been born alive. So, if Texas hadn't changed the laws defining a person as existing from the moment of conception, presumably nothing would have happened to this guy beyond the harm he inflicted upon his girlfriend directly. It's interesting to note that a mother cannot be charged for causing the deaths of her foetus. Meaning that if this woman had simply thrown herself down the stairs or started poking around with a coathanger, none of this would have happened. Instead, she got her boyfriend to help her out, and now his life is ruined too. So it all comes back to abortion. The original incident likely happened as a home-made abortion, I'm guessing. Change the definition of the start of personhood to something other than what it has been for the past few centuries, force women into doing abortions at home, punish anyone who dares to help her. I simply cannot understand why this sort of misogyny still exists. It sickens me.
• My personal opinion on the general matter of abortion aside, I believe that both she and the boyfriend were culpable in, at the very least, criminally negligent behavior. But then, in my opinion, the law is at fault here. I think that the law needs to account for the reasons that abortion is legal, and therefore any intentional attempt to cause abortion or miscarriage by any person should result in criminal penalties: abortion is legal for many reasons, and one of them is that women have access to properly trained professionals when they want to terminate their pregnancy. They should both go to jail. Besides, if they didn't want the children, why did they wait 5 months before he jumped on her mid-section? And that poor kitty is wall-eyed!
• and a few upside-down mid-thread roly-poly kittens!
• Even that kitten looks sad, fer chrissakes...
• And don't get me wrong -- I'm not supporting what these kids did -- I just see it as an entirely predictable result of the restrictions on access to abortion. The fact that he was charged with murder was only to emphasize the political point that life begins at conception. It has nothing to do with justice.
• They are making an example of him, obviously. Negligent homocide for the fetuses, a series of assaults on the mother would be more appropriate charges. Nevertheless, this is an incredibly ugly thing, all the way around. There is precious little to champion in the name of justice, here.
• homicide, not homocide, sorry
• Oh, I'm sure they have homocide in Texas too. Punishment is a lot lighter. (Sorry, was that a cheap shot? I guess it was...)
• "These were young kids who were caught in a bad situation.." They are responsible for their actions.
• Good riddance.
• You're absolutely right, Capt. Renault. The murder charge was absolutely, 100% politically motivated out of a transferred desire to ban abortion altogether. By my understanding of current US law (which is limited but I'm not purely talking out of my ass here), what he did could not be construed as murder, as it is defined in a weird way that a fetus is only protected if the mother wants it. Even negligent homicide wouldn't work, as by definition, the children had no legal protection, as their mother clearly wanted an abortion. So all I can see here is that he could (and should) be charged with assault on the mother. And the law should be changed to take into account the fact that abortion is legal partly in order to prevent this very sort of thing from happening: women undertaking an invasive (or otherwise violent, like him jumping on her) procedure that should only be allowed to be performed by licensed physicians. With that acknowledgment, the law should state that both the mother and the father undertook the practice of medicine without a license, and the appropriate punishment applied.
• From reading what information the article offers, it seems the coup de grâce of this tragedy had a strong impact on the outcome of the case. Flores stepped on her bulging belly more than once the week before she gave birth prematurely in a bathroom... I mean, it is sickening. The jury was most likely hard-pressed to find any reason for not convicting. Not to mention he was 18 at the time. C'mon, either you have a few brain cells or you don't. Of course it is difficult to come to any moral conclusion without knowing all of the facts. Did they make any attempts to seek help prior to the horrid event?
• They are responsible for their actions. This is the kind of moral justifications that allow a person to do anything to anyone, and then say it's there fault recieving it. eg: -Killed by a suicide bomber? You are responsible for your actions; you shouldn't have gone to the market that day. -Shot by a soldier? You are responsible for your actions; you shouldn't have gotten yourself into a warscape. -Beat up, tied up, and left in the desert? You are responsible for your actions; you shouldn't have been out that night.
• Now, Mr. Knick, that analogy isn't exactly apt. No one sought out these two, forced them to get pregnant, or forced them to end that pregnancy in gruesome fashion. The Texas legislature can be villified for making bad law, and the prosecutor can be villified for pressing to convict on that law when a plea bargain or lesser charges would have been in order, but to equate stomping on the stomach of your pregnant girlfriend to foment a miscarriage to "going to the market" is a little disingenuous. While Chyren may be abrupt, Flores and Basario *are* responsible for their actions, just as we all are. They indubitably committed *some* crime; what we debate here is what crime, and what constitutes just punishment.
• Just chiming in to say that there is a Planned Parenthood clinic in Lufkin, TX (the Angelina County seat), but this clinic does not offer abortion services. They would have had to go to the Houston PP clinic which is 120 miles away to obtain an abortion.
• Ah, if only they had attended those abstinence programs... Dousing fuel on the flames
• 120 miles away A two-hour drive.
• for teenagers with possibly no access to a car, that's a huge deal, fes
• oh, and an extra-cute kitten
• Killed by a suicide bomber? You are responsible for your actions; you shouldn't have gone to the market that day. The difference being, a suicide bomber can strike anywhere/anytime with/without warning. Now unless you are the Virgin Mary, pregnancy just does not ramdomly happen to individuals. 1. Penis -----> Vagina 2. Sperm -----> Egg 3. Fertilization -----> Embryo Bingo, we have pregnancy. Responsibility begins at number 1. If you go there, be prepared. By the time you are 18 years old, this should be clear. On preview: SideDish, I think that was the point Fes was trying to convey?
• Kitten Pile.
• ah, gotcha sugarmilktea. much obliged.
• Stealing bandwidth makes baby Jesus cry! The best kitten intervention yet!
• for teenagers with possibly no access to a car, that's a huge deal, fes Perhaps. And yet? Flores was 18 at the time, Basario 16. Either or both almost certainly had driver's licenses, and would only then need access to a car, not to own one - mom's car, friend's car, rental car even. Or a bus. Or a ride from a friend. Or a ride from a sympathetic uncle. Or a ride from one of the PP people in Lufkin. Or telling your frigging parents and putting the children up for adoption. ANYTHING but stomping your girlfriend into miscarriage. I think that was the point Fes was trying to convey? The opposite, actually. SideDish's first impression was correct. The inability to make a two hour drive would be the rare exception, imo, rather than the rule, for an American 18 year old.
• Thanks for the clarification Fes. I wasn't 100% certain, hence the ? after my comment.
• Happy to do so, my friend.
• Related and slightly tangential: Two years ago in New Zealand a teenager and two rugby teammates punched and kicked his pregnant girlfriend to make her miscarry. She went on to deliver a healthy baby. The boyfriend served 18 months in prison for assault. It's hard to say whether he would have served a longer sentence if she had indeed miscarried, or even whether he would have been charged with something stronger, but I wonder what would have happened to Flores had the babies survived.
• Wonder how this situation could have turned out if someone had bothered to make it legal for these two to learn about birth control methods in school. (Of course by "birth control" I obviously meant "pre-emptive abortion for the hellbound fornicators".) Go to hell for having sex. Go to hell doubly for using birth control. Go to hell even more for terminating an unwanted pregnancy. Go to hell for wishing that the idiots in charge of pushing religion-based sex ed into our schools would just dry up and go to hell. Nobody wins. It just makes me sort of sick the more I think about it. There's no good way for this to have ended, and so many ways in which it could have been prevented. Life in prison isn't the answer. Obviously from the end result here admitting that abstinence-only education doesn't work is also not the answer. The state will take no responsibility in this matter. The kids involved are not the ones who put the laws in place. I hope the people who sponsored and voted this fetal protection law in can sleep easy at night knowing that justice was served.
• I really have nothing much to say other than this is so sad. It is amazing the things we do in our teen years, and how deperate one can feel at that age. This whole act reeks of fear -- fear of parents, fear of responsibility, fear of the pressure resulting from having an abortion in East Texas. It makes my stomach churn to think of what these kids did, and to think of how desperate they must have been. SideDish: thank you for the diversions. I would love to get a look at the picture folders on your hard-drive.
• It's more than just a two hour drive, though. It's a four hour drive round trip. Plus the three to four hours actually spent preparing for, performing and recovering from the procedure. The cost of an abortion in the first trimester is about $350. And most clinics only offer abortion services one or two specific days per week. Because so few doctors perform abortions, many travel from clinic to clinic. Not to mention that in some localities (not sure about this one) there are notification/wait laws where the woman must recieve state mandated "health" information at the clinic then wait 24 hours before having the procedure. I am not saying that these circumstances couldn't have be overcome. And I won't even begin to offer them as a reason why this horrible act is justifiable. But I just want to clarify that in most places in the US getting an abortion isn't easy for adults, much less teens.
• I agree Fes, but that blanket cliche gets trotted out like it actually means something, and it doesn't. It can be used by any side in any argument. You can say that the state willfully and knowingly made abortion dificult to access, knowing full well that this sort of thing would result. The state is responsible for it's actions. So let's ignore the responsiblities of everyone else involved and focus solely on the fact the state is responsible for this miscarraige. Whenever person X utters "they're responsible for their actions" Person X is requiring you to ignore the responsibilities of all other parties involved. The statement puts all parties' actions on the shoulders of one individual. It's a cop-out used by people to dodge larger responsibilities. The examples I gave were meant to show how people dodge responsibility when they use the cliche. They all fit, because they show how much relevent info is lost when you reduce responsibility down to one party. The war example fits even more than the others, because we're talking about an over aggressive government with an agenda is trampling over the lives of people in its path. But that isn't the focus; the intent of of the examples is to show how the statement is used to dodge responsibility, which they do. The statement "they are responsible for their actions" is only used to enable someone else to dodge responsibility. It's a copout.
• Fes, my husband and I used to be volunteer escorts at PP in Houston, the main clinic where they'd probably have gone to get an abortion. Here's their abortion information page, which includes prices for abortions as of November 2004. She would have had to come twice to have an abortion, with a four-hour round trip each time, plus wait time in the clinic, etc. Or she could stay in Houston through the waiting period if she had somewhere to go. In addition, she'd have had to run a gauntlet of protesters on the day of the abortion and quite possibly on the day she came in for the initial appointment. That's apart from the expense of the abortion, which is as cheap as PP can make it, but still very expensive if you're poor. Abortion is legal in Texas, but nontrivial to obtain if you're outside an urban area. And somebody upthread asked why she waited 5 months. She may not have known much earlier. That sounds amazing and condescending, but it's also true. I went to a private school and between biology and my parents, I got a decent grounding in sex ed, not just some BS abstinence-only line. Not everybody is so lucky.
• I'm all about the granade, sugarmilktea.
• I was 17 when my daughter was born, and I still vividly remember how utterly terrifying the entire experience was. It's hard to explain the disordered thinking of a teenager: raising my child when I had no money, skills or education was perfectly reasonable - but telling my parents I wasn't a virgin?! Unthinkable. In short? What. Zanshin. Said.
• The inability to make a two hour drive would be the rare exception, imo, rather than the rule, for an American 18 year old. The inability to make a two hour drive may not be the standard, but it's still pretty damn common. And even if it were the exception, it's still the case here, regardless whether it's labeled common or rare. Even if they were the only exception in the whole world, they'd still be an exception.
• Kevin Drum has a good round-up on this story, but the most important point I haven't seen addressed in this thread is this: "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 the Houston PP office was out of the question.
• What's interesting to me in this is how I feel the ideological pull in my own head as I reflect on this. Sort of like the abstinence-only education issue -- it's so clearly not working, yet its proponents keep pushing it as a consistent part of their moral values agenda. The ideology becomes more important than actually keeping kids from getting pregnant or ill. Likewise here I find my strong desire to keep abortion legal trying to cloud the issue in my mind. My first reaction was not to the case itself, but rather to worry about what this means for Roe v. Wade.
• The law includes the definition of a person – with full rights to legal protection – as existing from the moment of conception. That's completely insane, and it's what at issue here, not the sad case the post is about. Why do you think your strong desire to keep abortion legal is "clouding the issue," middleclasstool? That is the issue, and this is one more step toward ending legal abortion. Fuck these people (the lawmakers, that is -- the kids are already fucked).
• I'm confused. By law, a fetus is not a person (this may change). You cannot be charged with killing a fetus. He assaulted his girlfriend at her request. How is this a crime, unless she wanted to press charges? which she clearly didn't. It is a good point that he conducted an unlicensed medical procedure, though would that be allowed if she requested it? But basically, he has been charged with killing a fetus, not assault. If this is a precedent, this means that killing a fetus is now illegal, and abortion should be illegal. Of course, when I think of their options - had they chosen to have the baby, and perhaps live in poverty, maybe become dependent on the state, many people would have said it was their choice, and that they have to take responsibility. It seemed to me that they tried to make a choice. I would have rathered that they had easy access a safe abortion, but they did what they thought was the best at the time. And no, it is not rare for an 18 year olds to not have a car, and to not have access to a car. Many poor people do not own cars, and their children do not learn to drive.
• aaronetc--I think most people are still on the question of whether she'd known early enough to take advantage of a clinic abortion. The PP page I linked shows that PP doesn't do abortions after 15 1/2 weeks. So yeah, no options if she wanted to terminate if she found out after 15 weeks (not quite 4 months).
• Telling them that abortion can cause breast cancer?!? What the heck? I thought that that idea had been shot and dumped into the swamp years ago.
• Wow. A sensible discussion on a sensitive issue. With kittens. This is the Internet isn't? * checks back of computer to see if its pugged in right.
• Telling them that abortion can cause breast cancer?!? What the heck? It is known to be untrue in scientific circles, an article of faith in anti-abortion circles, and a lie Texas doctors are required to tell patients. This Planned Parenthood volunteer'sreview of a book by an abortion protester in Houston describes the tactics used by anti-choice protesters that include the cancer canard. And yeah, the book is for real. This guy is outside Planned Parenthood every week doing his best to stop abortion.
• To add to both immlass's and Space Kitty's comments, my mother got pregnant with me at age 16 and refused to admit even to herself that she was pregnant until she was six months along and starting to show. It's not uncommon, I'm sure. (I'm lucky in that her denial meant she couldn't have an abortion, heh.) The blame in this particular situation seems to lie in so many directions that you'd get dizzy trying to see them all. But in the end it comes down to supremely bad choices on the part of the two teens involved, regardless of access to education. Who on earth thinks this way? It's beyond me.
• Who on earth thinks this way? It's beyond me. Desparate teenagers who aren't given enough access to safe planned parenting. I also wonder why they didn't talk to their families - perhaps it was not possible. Had I been in the solution, my mother would have bought two bus tickets (no car) to the clinic far away, or to a hospital, and gone with me to support me. Of course, it was an attitude like this that helped me not get pregnant as a teenager in the first place. But I had a friend who was thrown out of the house at age 16 after her mother found out she had lost her virginity.
• I didn't mean to imply that my feelings on Roe v. Wade are clouding the issue for me, though my fucktardedly-structured comment would seem to imply that. What I meant to say was basically that when I saw the post I felt my knee jerking, my conclusions forming before I'd even bothered to read the link. This is such a powerful and complex issue, and with powerful issues I think most of us who've made up their minds start almost running on autopilot after awhile. Roe v. Wade is certainly threatened by laws such as this, but even though I'm a die-hard, lifelong proponent of a woman's right to choose, I also understand where many supporters of these laws are coming from. I think these laws are a bad idea, but they're finding a lot of sympathizers. For instance, if some motherfucker shot and killed my wife while she was eight months pregnant and the baby died too, I'd want him to suffer twice as much. I realize that scenario is not at issue in this case, but neither do my pro-choice sympathies lead me to believe that anybody involved in this story is entirely innocent.
• That's what I mean, I guess jb. I've known enough people who've gotten into the exact predicament that these two did who reasoned it out, or even who didn't reason it out until the last possible second but certainly never would have done something as drastic. My grandparents were certainly less than understanding towards my mother but in the end they supported her and her decisions. Likewise if I had gotten pregnant my mother would have supported me, regardless of the choices I made. I guess we're very lucky, all of us, to have had backgrounds where this would (presumably) not happen, whether because we were educated, our parents were more understanding, we had access to the right facilities, whatever. Your friend would undoubtedly have had a hard time if she'd gotten pregnant - would she have resorted to this, though? I can't imagine anyone I know making this particular choice. And now I'm repeating myself, so time to stop.
• 1. Penis -----> Vagina 2. Sperm -----> Egg 3. Fertilization -----> Embryo Yyup, that's the way it works fer shure. But look: 1.5. contraception! That takes care of items 2 AND 3. Whowouldafiggered? Let's make it impossible for kids to get education about contraceptives, to obtain contraceptives, and let's let asshole insurance companies pay for the damned Viagra but not pay for women's birth control pills. Frogs, Zanshin, thank you for your compassion. These kids did a stupid thing, a horrible thing. What would possess someone to do this? Maybe the same sort of pressures that led some women to back alleys for coathanger abortions and others to drink carbolic acid or douche with lysol. What's the solution to this kind of god-awful behavior? We could start with education. Education NEVER hurts. Oh, wait. There went THAT idea. Can you imagine how desperate you would have to be to allow someone to jump on you like that? Surely it was painful physically and emotionally.
• We could start with education. Amen to that, BlueHorse. Personally, I feel that any person voting to take money away from education shouldn't be allowed in office. Period. And sex education, given the risks involved when kids aren't properly prepared to deal with their hormones, doubly so. A teen's brain is not wired like an adult brain is; the bundles of nerves in the noggin are just getting their final coat of myelin, the one that makes them work quickly and correctly. Because their brains aren't fully wired yet, they are incapable of making rational, logical decisions. Unfortunately for the teens, their genitals are fully wired and ready to do what genitals do. Not preparing these almost-grownups for the inevitable seems criminal.
• A key to the story is the line that "Most of the family is very pleased with the verdict." It would suggest that the kids' home situation was less than accommodating in terms of getting an abortion. Not just 'pleased' or 'satisfied' with the verdict, but "very pleased" at the verdict of murder. Given that reaction, it may reasonable to infer that there was no contraceptives, for fear that a parent may discover it, that the kids didn't take the first opportunity to reveal what had happened, that asking for a lift into town to get an abortion may have been quite impossible. Whatever it was, these kids were desperate for a solution -- and the more desperate one is, the less rational their acts and the less culpable they really are. So yeah. What Zanshin said.
• Let's make it impossible for kids to get education about contraceptives, to obtain contraceptives, and let's let asshole insurance companies pay for the damned Viagra but not pay for women's birth control pills. I agree wholeheartedly BlueHorse. My entire reaction to this case were two words. Undoubtedly, education was something lacking in this unfortunate case...
• Sorry for the delay, I hope you all don't think I was dodging the issue or seagull-posting (like seagull-management - fly in, poop all over everything, then fly back out). Work and sleep. Anyway... Mr. Knickerbocker said: You can say that the state willfully and knowingly made abortion dificult to access, knowing full well that this sort of thing would result. The state is responsible for it's actions. I agree. However, the responsibility doesn't cross - the state is responsible for it's actions - the sticky law, the overt dumbing down of curricula, up to the general overall decreasing availability of abortions across the state. I think that a good case could even be made that they created an environment that added additional pressure on Flores and Basario (hereafter "F&B") (although they are certainly not the *sole* pressurizers - I'd even go further and say that family/religious pressure exerted more inlfuence than the state if only by virtue of proximity). Even with the state created walls that blocked in F&B, asserting that the state is responsible for their ultimate actions is akin to the old "society made me do it" argument. Were F&B in a difficult position? Absolutely. Did state-instigated limited education and limited access make the situation worse? Almost as surely. Did the state force Flores into stomping Basario into miscarriage? No. That was their response to their situation. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people find themselves in situations similar to that of F&B every day - but they do not do this (that this makes the news is backhandedly indicative of the rarity of the event, man bites dog, etc). immlass: Abortion is legal in Texas, but nontrivial to obtain if you're outside an urban area. Mr. knickerbocker: And even if it were the exception, it's still the case here, regardless whether it's labeled common or rare. aaronetc: So the Houston PP office was out of the question. I haven't seen anything indicating the they could *not* physically get to Houston, but I concede the point: an abortion was probably extremely difficult, if not impossible, for F&B to obtain. But I still can't see how that in itself absolves them of their decision to do what they did. Two points: F&B's actions come at the end of a longish line of not very good decisions - they're young, I know, and up to the point of the miscarriage inducement, I think we can all understand how those decisions got made. But there is a point when one has to step up and take responsibility for one's actions, regardless of consequences. I understand completely when Space Kitty says: telling my parents I wasn't a virgin?! Unthinkable. But there comes a point when it *has* to become thinkable! It has to become *doable*. Can it be possible that F&B's family is so scary that F would rather risk two capital murder charges than come clean? Possible - but unlikely. Like the lack of a ride. In our efforts to be sympathetic to these kids (and I want to be too, I know these kids are screwed, and there but for the grace), I think we're all to willing to pile up exception upon exception in their defense, when Occam's Razor says otherwise. [more]
• Second point: Stand where you may on Roe V. Wade (and we should not forget that many many people who are not religious zealots but thoughtful, reasonable individual believe very strongly that abortion is the premeditated killing of a person), the states are allowed to make laws restricting how and when abortions may be provided and sex education curricula. They are *required* to prosecute crimes - jb said: He assaulted his girlfriend at her request. How is this a crime, unless she wanted to press charges? Pressing charges has nothing to do with it. A crime was committed, police are required to investigate and prosecutors are required to prosecute on behalf of the *state* not the victim (capital punishment laws are like this - often, the victim's family doesn't want the killer executed, but they have no say in the proceedings by that point, and perhaps rightly so, although that is for another discussion, but in any event you can see where the victim's not pressing charges resulting in no prosecution can end up being a HUGE problem). One can assume that, if these laws passed the legislation, they were voted on by the majority of state representatives, and those representatives purport to represent the will of the people of Texas, who by proxy have said that they do not want abortions to be either easy to come by or have students educated on their aspects. This is where Mr. K will accuse me of ducking the question, and he'd be right, to a point - but either one believes in the right of states to make their own laws where federal law has no jurisdiction, or does not. I do, by and large, believe state's rights ought to trump federal law in most cases (see the recent Supreme decision on medical marijuana); state's rights + representative democracy sometimes = troubling situations. But then, that is why there are appeals courts. I don't, by saying all this, mean to be an apologist for the Texas legislature or the prosecutor - it's just that while (a little reluctantly, honestly) declaring for pro-choice, I can understand the state's position (even if I may disagree) and cannot condone F&B's ultimate decision, though I may understand the pressures leading to it. But to echo MCT and BLueHorse: education is key. Education provides options. It is less onerous, I think, that Texas made abortions difficult to acquire as it is that they altered the curricula in their schools to keep Texas children from having those options. In my perfect world, there would be no abortions, because they wouldn't be necessary. Reality is different (hence my my reluctant support for pro-choice). Abortion is an ugly, ugly thing - but sadly, sometimes the best choice. The Texas Legislature made that choice a lot harder on F&B, but ultimately I think they still had a choice. And they chose very badly.
• a helpful resource? for "Counseling the Post-Abortive" In Our Midst Ministries is dedicated to bringing awareness to the church regarding those within the church that have been hurt by abortion and other sexual sin, and to providing information to churches and parachurch organizations to minister to their specific needs. For more information visit In Our Midst Ministries, Inc. at http://www.inourmidst.com. oh christ. (pun intended)
• Fes - as far as I knew, assault was not like murder - the person assaulted usually has to press charges. There was no murder in this case.
• JB: I may be wrong about that, and I'm neither a cop nor a lawyer, but my understanding has been that, if a crime involving the injury of another person is committed, the not-pressing-charges option goes away. The idea being that battered wives, assaulted minors, guys who get into fistfights outside of bars, may be psychologically incapable of pressing charges or might not press charges out of fear of reprisal.
• There was no murder in this case. Disagreement on that statement might be, imo, the defining element of this whole episode.
• I believe Fes is correct; in any criminal act it is the people, not the victim, who brings action and prosecutes. In a surprising number of domestic violence assaults, the defendant is prosecuted over the victim's objection. And I wholeheartedly agree with Fes' position. I do believe murder was committed here, albeit under pitiful circumstances.
• In criminal acts, the charge is laid by the state. The state is the party with 'carriage' of the file -- they call all the shots. The theory is that a criminal act is an offence against the whole of society, rather than any one individual. That theory is in place to try to keep things to the side of justice rather than simple vengeance. Where the state has declined to prosecute, the individual can seek personal damages, or may even start a private prosecution using the same 'public' law as the state. But although the state has carriage of the case, the victim will still have a lot of influence -- a lot of attention is being paid to "victims' rights" these days -- if only through the necessity of their cooperation.
• People are arguing that the kids should have been able to reason things out, and also arguing that education is key. Coming from the south--though not, thankfully, from Texas (Go Hogs! Wooooo Pig Soooieee! No, we haven't forgotten the SWC days)--I can see how those two points tragically intersect...or, er, fail to intersect...or something. Had these kids' educations been better, they might have reasoned things out better, even if said education did not include abortion services access. But the kids were not smart, and didn't get the education they'd have needed to reason things out in a way that might have avoided this sorry affair. Or might not have. The world is full of stupid people, as we know, and the implication above, that the family was likely to have been very anti-learning-that-their-daughter-was-pregnant, seems pretty strong. As for "at some point you have to stand up," I can testify that teenagers don't necessarily think this way. Smart ones, maybe, but not all of them. I have a cousin, rather plump of frame, who one day went into the bathroom complaining of a stomache ache, and while in there gave birth to a baby. No one had noticed that she was pregnant, and even though the baby was premature, chances are she was at least 7 1/2 months along. Furthermore, my cousin claimed not to have known that she was pregnant, and that the birth was as big a surprise to her as to us. Think about that for a second. Before you say, "Well, it's happened before," as no doubt it has, I would like to add that this same cousin had dropped out of college and not bothered to tell her parents, who continued paying her duplex rent for six months plus while thinking she was attending classes. Also, the baby was half-black, which I am ashamed to say is unfortunately a very big deal with many factions of my traditionally southern family. Ugh. So there was both precedent and motivation for saying nothing. Point is--rationality doesn't always enter in. And chances are the kid didn't think he would be tried for murder. I mean, he obviously wasn't reading the Texas Law Review.
• I think Fes made some excellent points, and I believe education is the key. But then I also think crazy things like ALL contraception, up to and including voluntary sterilization (vasectomies and tube-tying) should be 100% free, anonymous, and state subsidized. People are going to have sex, teenagers among them, and no-cost anonymous contraception can go a long way to realistically moving forward on this problem. Would that have stopped these teenagers from doing what they did? Not likely, but if my proposition were law, I think a good case could then be made of stronger criminal charges for both, which (purely in my opinion) are deserved. Here in California, a woman can drop her baby off anonymously at any hospital, police station, or fire station in the first few days after birth. Legally, nobody is allowed to ask her anything, just let her drop the baby off and go. So why is it that many women still drop their babies into dumpsters? Desperation answers the question, but does not mitigate the criminality of their actions any more than the desperation of a laid-off worker with their last dime in their pocket holding up a 7-11 with a shotgun.
• But don't you see, free contraception would just ENCOURAGE kids to have sex! We have to keep them in FEAR and IGNORANCE of sex! That's the only way we can keep them safe! "We have to tell them that sex equals death!" (Barbara Bush, sometime in the 90s) After all, that's what's been working so well up until this point... :rolleyes: Personally, I blame the lib'ruls for making sex less scary. Oh what have ye wrought...
• Anyone who realistically believes that ignorance of contraception is a discouragement that could prevent teens from having sex is deluding themselves. Teenagers have just found out that their bits work. Virtually all of them will be taking them for test drives, either alone or with a willing someone who meets their minimum attractiveness criteria.
• TP -- please don't ever put the word "sex" so close to "Barbara Bush" again. Please.
• Fes, I appreciate your points. Should F&B be responsible for their actions? Hell yes. Were they put in a position that enabled them to terminate a pregnancy in a responsible way? Hell no. I've sat and watched (and marched and fought) while the Texas Lege rolls my home state back into the Dark Ages. This is the result they wanted. It makes me so angry I can't really talk about it rationally. I wouldn't have wanted Flores to walk free. At the very least, he needs counselling, and I'd think probation was in order, too. And Basoria needs counselling too. But life sentences for helping his girlfriend terminate a pregnancy with her consent are way out of line, even if he did beat the crap out of her. And if the choice is life sentences or nothing, I think nothing is closer to his actual level of culpability given the extenuating circumstances: lack of education, lack of access, etc. One of the many reasons I am pro-choice is because I feel strongly that cutting off access to abortion (not to mention sex education and contraception) only leads to worse tragedies that the negative consequences of abortion. Flores' and Basoria's case persuades me further of the rightness of this view.
• From another board that's discussing this:

  An additional twist, from a statement made by his lawyer in an interview with Canadian radios "As it Happens" program (heard last night since it is transmitted in the US by NPR) is that the lawyer alleged the reason she did not get an abortion was bad advice from her doctor. Oddly enough that little tidbit appears absent from the AP report, which simply states that she "regretted not having an abortion" when she began her attempts to induce a miscarriage.

  Anybody heard anything about this? Did anyone hear the NPR coverage?
• I agree with what jb said every step of the way (along with all the other people who were saying pretty much the same thing). If the kids weren't in rural texas (or any other ass backwards area), they - would have known how important it is to use birth control - would have had access to it - wouldn't have felt pressured to hide the pregnancy from society, and may have gotten support from an adult - would have had access to a safe abortion - and they certainly wouldn't have been convicted. The quotes from the prosecution in the article are sickening. He took advantage of the jurors' ignorance of the applicable laws and appealed to their emotions to drive them to convict, because his case could not stand on its own legal merits. I only hope that the family has the financial means to appeal this, because they win once they can get it out of texas. I always hear progressives that live in texas insisting that the state isn't completely full of crazy wingnuts. I just do not understand how you can bear to live with so fucking many of them.
• Cautionary Kitten Peeks In On Thread
• Sidedish, that's one of my boys!
• Why the FUCK isn't every high school required to have a fish bowl of free condoms by every exit door? This crap is so totally preventable. Too bad more of the Xtian right doesn't use them
• I hear you, smallish bear, but I think these kids would have been in the same situation in many areas of the country. I was raised in TX and moved to Ohio six years ago. I have to tell you, it's not much different here, politically. Our local abortion provider offers abortions two half days a week, because we have to share the doctor with Cleveland and (I think) another city, and protesters are always there. (And at the local PP sometimes, which doesn't even offer abortions.) While abstinence only sex ed is not state mandated, as it is in TX, many of my students recieved only abstinence information in high school. This is also a largely Catholic area, with the attending viewpoints on contraception. (I'm also at a state uni whose student insurance does cover Viagra but not the pill.) I agree with you, smallish bear. I just don't want this to end up in a round of TX bashing :)
• I've also noticed that the funamentalist Protestant viewpoint on contraception is getting pretty close to the Catholic viewpoint. For two groups of people who won't usually admit that the other is a "real" Christian, they are beginning to work together in a political bloc pretty well. I was raised in a fundy Baptist church. I still consider myself Christian, but I am one of the mythical liberal ones.
• Give me the Harry Blackitt school of protestantism. French Ticklers. Black Mambos. Crocodile Ribs. Sheaths that are designed not only to protect, but also to enhance the stimulation of sexual congress.
• Southern Baptist cum Atheist here. That combination happens a LOT.
• You cum on Atheists? What? Someone get me a Q-tip, I don't think I heard that right.
• See, I knew when I typed it that someone would go there. It's nice that in this topsy-turvy world, some things can always be counted upon.
• I aim to please. As you do yourself, no doubt. (I just figured that while the morality meter was down, I might as well get the cheap shots in while I could.)
• For shame! A cute little baby's life is cruelly stamped out every minute you're not having sex!!! Now get to work you mass-murdering monsters!
• SAVE THE BABIES! SAVE THE SWEET LITTLE BABIES! Once those babies are born, through, their mamas better not try to stay on welfare for a year or two. I'm not payin' for 'em, I'll tell you that right now.
• As always, this will rest on the backs of women. It is always our fault: always our problem. So I get some pig to stomp on my belly. Does that absolve me from guilt? Even though it might be legal to have the kid hacked up in my womb and sucked out. No. It's murder. I don't care how dis-advantaged you are. Too bad they couldn't charge her, at least with complicity.
• I bet the law that says women can't be charged with harming their own fetus was created to keep fetal murder laws from prosecuting women who get abortions.
• cynnbad: your comment confuses me. Are you serious or is my sarcasm meter on the fritz? If you are, you must believe that these fetuses were people, not body parts of the mother. At what point exactly does the oocyte or zygote become a person? I'd like to hear a clear explanation of this.
• I have to play a little catch up with this thread. Sorry. I may be wrong about that, and I'm neither a cop nor a lawyer, but my understanding has been that, if a crime involving the injury of another person is committed, the not-pressing-charges option goes away. Not true. It might be different in Texas, but I do know from first hand, that in at least two states (Nevada and Hawai'i) that this isn't the case, and I'm pretty sure that all states agree on this. (Look at bar fights, and other "consentual" assualts). Matter of fact, the police did what they could to talk people out of pressing charges. Your right when you say that deciding whether this was assault or murder is a core part of this story. There's still still an implication that F&B had ths coming to them, that they deserve to be overpunished. F&B are responsible for the miscarriage. They are NOT respoinsible for Texas's reaction to it. You can't blame society's behavior on them. You can't blame Texas's actions on them. Texas has displayed gross incompentance in this case, and it's Texas's own fault for it, not F&B. Blaming F&B for Texas's behavior is akin to blaming a Tutsi's for the Rwandan massacre.
• As always, this will rest on the backs of women. It is always our fault: always our problem. I agree, and I also think this misogynistic attitude has to stop. Too bad they couldn't charge her, at least with complicity. What the bloody fuck? Were you actually approving of how society always places the burden of guilt on the woman?