“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes. The entire draft opinion can be read below:
(www.scribd.com)
🏆 WINS OF THE DAY 🏆
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (243)
sorted by:
The doctor is the assassin. The woman is the one who hired the assassin. Lots of case law regarding these types of arrangements. Both are put on trial for murder.
Extenuating circumstances can always be considered, but it is hard to imagine a situation where it could be considered anything other than 1st degree murder. It can never be an "accident", and claiming self defense against a harmless baby is a real stretch. It is always premeditated, and "that person was inconvenient for me" is not a defense. I suppose there might be a case where temporary insanity could be involved. But ultimately, if I agree to hire a hitman to kill someone, even if I am being coerced, that is still my decision.
Alternate scenario: Parents tell a 15 year old minor "take this gun and go shoot that store clerk". Minor does as he is told. Is the minor guilty? Should the minor have known this is wrong? Were they competent to think for themselves?
Our justice system already has the ability to deal with minors committing murder. Coercion to commit murder does not absolve a minor from the responsibility of committing murder. The punishment may be different depending on circumstances. Temporary insanity and diminished capacitiy are already available to the defense as possible pleas. The crime doesn't change because of the age of the victim who was killed.
No scenario is ever a precisely "equivalent" scenario. The trick is to find analogies and through that bring clarity to the discussion. You claim there is a major difference basically due to emotional distress of the murderer. That is certainly a mitigating factor that could argue for diminished capacity in some instances, but it absolutely does not legally change the crime that has been committed.
My point is we do not need to make any special laws for this. We already have everything we need in the existing justice system. It is simply murder no matter how you look at it. We should not treat murder due to abortion any different than any other murder. Murder of anyone already has a plethora of case law that can be argued by the defendant in cases of diminished capacity. And certainly, if someone is an accessory to murder they can and should be charged as well.
Trying to claim that murder by abortion is somehow a different thing than murder by other weapons is not a legally defensible position in my opinion.