[ SECRET POST #3418 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3418 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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05. [SPOILERS for Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood]




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06. [WARNING for blood/gore]




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07. [WARNING for blood/gore]




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08. [WARNING for incest]




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09. [WARNING for rape]




















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #488.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

So just wondering... if someone were to stab a pregnant woman with intent to kill the unborn child would you argue that the killing of the fetus should not count as a charge when sentencing the person?

[ypsilon42]

I am not ayrt or a legal expert, but here it goes:

It's a difficult question, bc that would obiously be a repugnant thing to do, but I think legally (in most western countries at least) unborn children do not count as people and therefore the person could not be charged with murder. And while that sounds bad, I honestly don't think we should legally define unborn children as people (not at last bc of issues regarding medical complications and/or abortion).

(On the plus side, this theoretical attacker would definitely go away for physical assault and attempted murder of the woman, so there's that.)

[tree_and_leaf]

But there's good pro-choice reasons for making in an offence to assault a woman in order to make her miscarry - in England and Wales, I believe 'child destruction' mostly comes up in cases of domestic violence, for example the case where a man stamped on his girlfriend's abdomen because she had decided to proceed with the pregnancy and he wasn't OK with that. (For the record, late term abortions carried out with proper medical supervision are explicitly excluded from the definition of the offence). That wouldn't have met the standards for attempted murder, but it's clearly different to a regular gbh offence, because of the different intent, and I think it's right that the law should treat it differently.

[ypsilon42]

That's intresting. As I pointed out, I am no legal expert, so I just answered with my gut feeling on the situation. I still think that fetuses should not be treated as people, but what you mentioned seems like a really useful addition to cover these kind of cases.

(Nonetheless this is getting pretty far away from the original point and what happend in the show, so....)

[tree_and_leaf]

I think the useful aspect of that charge is that it's explicitly not homicide - but yeah, we've wandered pretty far off topic.

[diet_poison]

Don't you think there should be some penalty for killing the unborn if she had wanted to keep it, at least? Imagine the emotional damage you're causing to the woman on top of the physical and the trauma she'd already experience from being stabbed if you killed a fetus she wanted to keep.

I think feticide is a reasonable charge in cases like that.

(Also I definitely think it is especially bad to stab a pregnant woman especially if you're going for her gut.)

[ypsilon42]

Yeah, what the user above you mentioned about 'child destruction' laws in Britain seems pretty reasonable to me. I just don't think that it should be equated to killing a person.

And for the other thing, idk, as long as there is a killing intent, I don't really see the difference (which is the reason I specified that in the original comment).

[diet_poison]

"Child destruction" seems like a very strange phrase to pick for that if people are trying to separate it from killing a born human. Children = born, breathing humans. That's why I suggested the term feticide. (Though personally I am uncomfortable trying to completely separate the unborn from their humanity.)

[(Anonymous)]

Yes. The person would still get criminal battery, assault and attempted murder (actual murder if she dies) against the mother but ffs, there's a reason it's impossible in many if not most jurisdictions to actually try someone for murdering a fetus unless it's a baby that's taken its first breath. The question of 'when is a fetus a person rather than a pile of cells' has barely been settled in the public arena let alone the legal one.

[tree_and_leaf]

There might be additional charges depending on which jurisdiction you're in and how far along the baby is. For instance in English and Welsh law, there's the offence of child destruction, though that's only applicable when the unborn child is deemed to have been capable of being born alive, so I guess it wouldn't apply in Lucretia's case (not a fan of the show but I'm guessing from what people are saying that she was at an early stage). It's a pretty unusual charge, but it's been used occasionally. There was a case in Wales a few years ago where a man raped and murdered a woman who was eight and a half months pregnant by stabbing her in the abdomen - he was charged with rape, murder and child destruction.