What.The.FUCK? That's all I can put together right now. Need coffee.

Voluntary vs. Involuntary pregnancy termination. And she has the right to regulate what goes in and out of her body. So fuck off, CBS News posters.

in short: it's my fucking body, retards. when i come to your house and start dictating terms with your carcass, THEN, we can have this wee chat, savvy?

what that guy did was wrong-- he was the very definition of ANTI CHOICE.

Actually, we do get it both ways. Attacking a woman, physically or though drugs, is assault. Period.

If you are outside the body, you do not get to use force to decide what happens inside the body!

Although the story serves to underscore the reality that pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to domestic violence -- expectant mothers are more likely to be victims of murder than to die of any other cause --

That's the scariest thing I've heard all day. Why? How? Is it because they don't engage in much risky behaviors that could lead to other types of death? Is it usually husband/boyfriend murder? Creepy. Yet another reason I do not want to be pregnant.

@hortense: No shit. If I drink poison and fuck up my liver, whatever - my choice. If someone else does it, they're assaulting me. It said the woman had abdominal pain and bleeding. I don't see how these people can't see the difference.

"I find it interesting that he gets sentenced to 18 months in prison for trying to get rid of the fetus and she can legally get rid of the fetus by having an abortion."

HE TRIED TO POISON HER YOU FUCKING TWAT!

key word is choice. CHOICE. a woman decides what she does with her body, no one else. this is not rocket science!

FATHERS RIGHTS DUDE.

WTF is wrong with people?! *Head explodes*

I see it this way. The violence was committed against the mother. This is primary. The violence against a child/fetus/embryo/undecided should not be the focus of any such issue.

Don't grind up pills of any kind and put them in my food and drink, and we won't have this problem, umkay?

Some states have laws saying that if a pregnant woman is murdered, depending on how far along she is, the murderer can be tried for two murders. I don't think that's a federal law. It's also kind of dangerous. I don't know what kind of threshhold they have for when it's murder and when it's not, but I'd hope it's the same kind of threshhold as there is for legal abortion--i.e., pre-viability, which is often a gray area. In my state that's put at 20 weeks, which is kind of bullshit but whatever.

When I worked for NARAL, they always told us to avoid the whole "when does life begin" discussion, because it's utterly fruitless. That's what these comments seem to be getting at.

Wow.

Think about sex. I can choose to have sex with someone, and that's fine, but it's illegal for someone to force me to have sex with them. You have the same eventual action (sex), which we've sanctioned as okay, but the presence or absence of choice makes all the difference.

the man is just a sperm donor. it's her body hence it's her fetus/parasite and thus her choice. simple. plus the options for a man are either to knowingly decieve the woman (which clearly distinguishes it from an abortion) or to engage in an act of violence (also a clear departure from present day abortion).

the analogous situation for a man is handing the woman the pill after having asked (and receiving permission) to do so or likewise driving her to the clinic.

So the law says a woman (host of the parasite) gets to decide if her child is a parasite or a baby!!??

Actually, YES you dumb fuck. Exactly that. That's why it's MY CHOICE.

I can't really speak to Swedish law but essentially in the States, you cannot have an abortion without your consent.

Also, this is why many pro-choicers opposed Connor and Lacey's law (wanting to pass a different bill that would have increased penalties for violence against pregnant women) - because it really does murky the argument in the public's eyes.

To me, though, it's simple. It's about autonomy, and if anyone - a man slipping you mife or the government forcing you to carry to term and give birth - gets in the way of that, that is wrong.

Once again, if men had babies, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Because they sure as fuck would want control over their bodies. But it's wrong for us to.

@katekate: yes. Plus, anyone out there have some stats/pointer to the issue of domestic abuse against pregnant women being more likely? I think I have heard this before. It has the ring of truth to it, for me.

@katekate: yup, the slippery slope. sorry, it begins when it's viable outside my uterus.

This is so tiresome. My body, my choice. Period. End of discussion.

Anyone who chooses to frame the discussion in such a way won't be swayed by any logic, information or citation of longstanding legal precedents....

And really, kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach and aborting a fetus that's not much more than a glob of cells is not really the same thing.

@katekate: I think the law states the fetus has to be viable outside the womb to be counted as an individual murder. Personally if someone killed me and my viable fetus, I'd want double murder charges.

You all have covered all the salient points for me already. Namely, Fuck Off Idiots.

Now I'm off to get coffee. Keee-rist!

@Leiakat: Yeah, sorry, that's what I was trying to get at. I was getting so outraged by this and also by my state's bullshit marker of "20 weeks is viability for everyone" that I lost my ability to be cogent. Thanks:)

@DorothyZbornak: WORD.

The way I see it, is that there is secondary right holder (the fetus) living inside the primary right holder (the mother), thus giving the primary right holder the choice to do as she sees fit.

But that's besides the point. If those douchebags had used something other than RU-486 to try to induce the miscarriage, let's say arsenic, there would be no question, they tried to poison those women.

I think it's the term "murder" where it becomes murky, because murder refers to a human, which means the fetus, which means a fetus is a life, blah blah blah. It steps up the action from assault to murder, which is really different. Not that, of course, this guy doesn't deserve to be tried for everything they can pin on him.

EFF the CBS commenters. Take the fetus out of the equation entirely, and see what you have. Drugging a woman (with ANY intent, whether to make it easier to rape her or to kill her fetus), or kicking her in the stomach (or anywhere else in her body) is still ASSAULT. It doesn't MATTER if she's pregnant or not. An abortion is a voluntary medical procedure. Taking RU-486? A voluntary ingestion of medication. Women do not suddenly have FEWER rights when they become pregnant.

I don't think he received jail time for murdering the fetus, but for (chemically) assaulting his girlfriend. I don't understand why pundits are constantly grasping at straws and undertones to stir up trouble.

Also, in regards to that first comment in the article, were either of these two men charged with or convicted of murdering an unborn child?

@DorothyZbornak: Who was it that said if men could get pregnant, abortion would be sacrament?

@Erinjb: yeah, where's the outrage that this douchebag could have caused her death by, for example, uterine haemorrhage?

After receiving a ridiculous email at work today about "If Women Ruled the World" which contained ridiculous pictures that portrayed dumb fucking stereotypes about women (example: a woman's version of a hammer and screwdriver set would be a high heeled shoe and a butter knife LOLZ) I think I'm going to be in fighting mode today.

As everyone has already said: My body, my choice. How the FUCK can anyone think that poisoning a pregnant woman just because YOU (the dude) don't want the kid be considered a sort of abortion? Seriously? Are you fucking kidding me?

Get the fuck over it. Women are going to have abortions, not only because they don't want a child, not only because it's their choice how to life their lives, but because chances are the guy who knocked her up is a shithead motherfucker like this guy right here.

ARGH.

@type_slowly: Just googled it...Florynce Kennedy. Bless her.

It's interesting that when a woman becomes pregnant, her life seems to be a secondary consideration. These two men poisoned these women. That's attempted murder. The death of the fetuses they were carrying is a very sad by-product of the crime but the main crime is against the woman. These women had made a choice to have a baby. That's their right. I find it hard to believe that this was about men not wanting to be fathers since men walk away from children every day without a backward glance. This was a crime committed against the women involved. Why aren't the people commenting upset about that.

@type_slowly: Heh, she's so right!

@BiscuitDoughJones: Yeah, you and everyone else have already said everything I was going to say. Anti-choice people scare the shit out of me.

Psh - it is the woman's BODY and HER health at issue here. Why do people always want to conveniently forget that?

Why would someone DEFEND a guy for kicking a pregnant woman's stomach, or feeding her an abortion pill?

Oh sweet lord. Having your psychopath boyfriend grind up abortion pills and put them in your food without you knowing is quite different than getting an abortion. It is assault on a female's body.
I'm seriously terrified that abortion will be outlawed. And I HATE when people say "Well if you don't want a baby, don't have sex!" Sex is a natural human function and sometimes the birth control is ineffective, dipshit.
UGHHH it makes me so. angry.
Let's just hope my bc works for the next ten years until I want to have kids. *cross fingers*

One thing that really bothers me with this type of crime is women get screwed both ways.

For a woman that feels her unborn child is life at conception and has its asshole father force its 'death', she loses her desired justice because the needed laws would hinder the right of another woman to have an abortion.

This whole thing just makes me so angry and sorrowful at the same time.

@topsy: Because the lives of the babies, the innocent unborn babies trump the lives/rights/decisions of the knocked-up whores, of course. /sarcasm

It's too early in the day for shit like this. Actually, it's never a good time for shit like this. Rar.

@meaghan2k: That email sounds like the most retarded thing I've heard in days. The person who came up with that doesn't want to know the things I can do with a butter knife and a high heeled shoe.

"So the law says a woman (host of the parasite) gets to decide if her child is a parasite or a baby!!?? How sick this all is..."

Actually, yes. Pregnancy is no walk in the park. It's difficult and potentially dangerous. And if the "host" is unwilling, either physically or psychologically, to endure the experience, no one should have the right to force her to go through it. Conversely, if a woman is willing to "host" a fetus and go through all that entails-- morning sickness, discomfort, labor and delivery-- no one has the right to interfere with the bodily functions that make it possible for her to "host" said "parasite." The Swedish sperm shooter had his chance to effect the outcome of his girlfriend's fertility and, apparently, chose to forgo a condom. Thereafter, his window of opportunity for making the major decisions closed. Her body, her choice.

@Scoregasm: Namely, stab them in the jugular.

@violetbeauregarde: @SinisterRouge:
Why don't I see the comments you are responding to? Maybe my computer has created hate-block so I don't have to get mad at this crap anymore.