US abortion doctor guilty of murders

To be picky, if they're delivered alive and breathing, I'm not sure they're called foetuses anymore.

This is so messed up that I don't even know where the jury started sorting it out. Feel so much for those poor women and their children. However, I do think it's very true that this is a result of what happens when abortions are limited - these women wanted to end their pregnancies, they were poor and mostly from ethnic backgrounds (some, including the adult woman who died, were refugees) and they could only access this. If you limit women's access to safe and hygienic healthcare, including abortion, then this type of thing will happen. Obviously I am in no way excusing this man's actions, he's a monster, but it certainly plays on my mind.

I'm going to call BS on this. There is ABSOLUTELY NO SHORTAGE of abortion clinics in Philadelphia so to blame this of a lack access to abortions for "poor, and ethnic women" in Philadelphia is nonsense. This is not Jackson, Mississippi.

http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&gs_rn=12&gs_ri=psy-ab&suggest=p&pq=google&cp=23&gs_id=20&xhr=t&rls=com.microsoft:en-ca:IE-SearchBox&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.46471029,d.aWM&biw=1320&bih=558&wrapid=tljp1368571524463042&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=abortion+clinics+in+philadelphia&fb=1&gl=ca&hq=abortion+clinics&hnear=0x89c6b7d8d4b54beb:0x89f514d88c3e58c1,Philadelphia,+PA,+USA&sa=X&ei=kL6SUamZOcjMqQHvnoGABw&sqi=2&ved=0CLQBEMgT

He should certainly get everything that's coming to him, not least for the adult manslaughter and for illegal late abortions.

However, and I know this won't be a popular opinion, I don't think that very late term abortions should be held under the same conditions as murder. There is a huge difference between killing a premature baby that has no more consciousness than the animals that get killed every day, and killing a human who is aware of their life, and has invested in their past and future.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's disgusting. I don't know how any human could hold a living potential human up and cut its spine with scissors. All I'm saying is that it shouldn't be treated as first degree murder.

Really? So, these babies that were removed at 30 weeks have no more consciousness than the animals that get killed every day so shouldn't really be thought of as humans and those that kill them not thought of as murders? But presumably if they spent just six more weeks in the womb and werre delivered into the world at the hands of a midwife before having their spines cut you would consider it murder?

What a difference six weeks makes!

Let's stop calling this "illegal late abortion" and call a spade a spade. Abortion in the state of Pennsylvania, as in the UK, is legal to 24 weeks. After that time the law considers the fetus to be a human being and it becomes murder.

I believe that all human life is important and that no one, whatever crimes they've committed, is a lost cause. The right to life is the most fundamental right, from which all others stem, and except in self-defence, we have no right to take any other person's life.

It's always going to be a spectrum, so there has to be a cut-off point. Calling it murder at birth doesn't invalidate my point any more than you calling it murder after 24 weeks, but not before.

Regardless of what the law says (and once again, I still think it's horrific and you need to be a very sick person to want to cut a baby's spine), I don't think killing a baby at 30 weeks from a mother who wanted an abortion is the same degree of crime as going up to an adult and cutting their throat. I'm not saying it isn't a crime, I'm saying that I would see it as illegal late abortion, possibly at the same crime level as manslaughter, but not murder.