Restructuring the Debate over Fetal Homicide Laws

Authors

Carolyn B. Ramsey, University of Colorado Law SchoolFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication

Ohio State Law Journal

Year

2006

Citation Information

Carolyn B. Ramsey, Restructuring the Debate over Fetal Homicide Laws, 67 Ohio St. L.J. 721 (2006), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/faculty-articles/379.

Abstract

The worst problems with the fetal homicide laws that have proliferated around the nation are quite different than the existing scholarship suggests. Critics often argue that the statutes, which criminalize the killing of a fetus by a third party other than an abortion provider, undermine a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy. This concern is overstated. Although supported by anti-abortionists, many of the fetal homicide laws embody the perspective of the so-called "abortion grays," who eschew the absolutism of the doctrinaire pro-choice and anti-abortion camps. This Article explores how a contextual view of life-taking allows us to reconcile legal abortion with murder liability for the third-party killer of a fetus. Pro-choice advocates ought to re-focus the abortion debate on the pregnant woman 's defense of her bodily autonomy, rather than on the personhood or nonpersonhood of the unborn. However, despite their basic compatibility with women's rights, the fetal homicide laws, as drafted, do not offer a satisfactory approach to the problem of pregnancy violence under utilitarian or retributivist rationales. Extremely punitive measures may not be successful in deterring intimate abuse. Even more troubling, the mens rea provisions of many of the statutes fail to ensure fairness to defendants. This Article seeks to spark a dialogue about fetal homicide and, more generally, about violence against pregnant women that breaks free from the polarized rhetoric of the abortion debate.

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