Pregnant women shot by Police Officer

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PhiriTalk said:
think the police officer should be protecting the innocent unborn child, if that involves not killing the woman to protect the child, then yes.

Justifying collateral damage is antithetical to pro-life beliefs. The unborn have full constitutional rights no matter what.
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So to summarize your position, the police officer should be psychic and know if a woman is pregnant before he defends himself against her. The woman has no responsibility for setting the deadly chain in motion. Got it.
 
So the person who pulled the trigger isn’t responsible for the shooting?
 
I’m really hoping you’re a kid in school. 😉 I’m going to go put my kids down for bed.

You have legal culpability and moral culpability. You’re not making the distinction.

Suppose I’m out hunting, and I hear leaves rustle, and I shoot without verifying my target. It’s a pregnant woman. She and her unborn baby both die due to my carelessness. That’s my fault-- because I was an irresponsible shooter-- but it’s homicide-- because two human beings died-- and I’d probably be charged with criminal negligence.

Now suppose I’m a police officer. Suppose I’ve pulled someone over for speeding, they jump out of their car, and they’re running at me with a baseball bat. I tell them to freeze and lay face-down on the ground. They ignore me. I empty my gun. It was a pregnant woman, and they both die. I’ve still committed homicide, but it’s not murder, because it wasn’t premeditated. There would be an internal investigation, but no prosecutor would touch the case, either for manslaughter or criminal negligence.

In all scenarios, there’s a preventable tragedy. One could have been avoided by not walking through the deep woods during hunting season, or by verifying my target. The other could have been avoided by knowing how to properly interact with police. In both cases, two people died, and it was a tragedy. But you’re trying to make a point, and in the process, you’re not making a sensible argument, in your efforts to be all gotcha-gotcha-gotcha.

I’m putting my kids to bed. Good night.
 
PhiriTalk said:
The police officer could have saved the innocent unborn child by not shooting it though. That could’ve prevented the killing of the innocent unborn child.
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You realize not everyone who’s pregnant looks pregnant?

Not everyone who’s pregnant has an enormous stomach?

I got pregnant in August. I didn’t tell my coworkers about it until February, perhaps. Maybe March.

So I spent six, seven months pregnant… and no one had a clue just by looking at me.

Because we don’t look like we have watermelons stuck under our shirts from the moment of conception.

And some women somehow manage to stay skinny their entire pregnancies. They never even look like they have a cantaloupe… I don’t know how they do it.
 
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Does the innocent unborn child only have rights if the woman looks pregnant?
 
The person who’s doing the shooting can only take those rights into account if he’s able to register the fact that she’s pregnant.

If someone merely yells, “I’m pregnant”, he has to decide in an instant whether she’s telling the truth or lying to get him to hesitate, so she can get under his guard.

If someone looks pregnant, he has to decide in an instant, “Is she pregnant, or is she just fat?”

He doesn’t get to analyze. He just gets to react.

You’re trying to shift the culpability onto the person with the weapon, but he doesn’t have all the facts.

The person with all the facts has the obligation to not put herself in situations where she’ll endanger her unborn child. Whether it’s getting hopped up on drugs or alcohol, or being on the battlefield, or indulging in gang warfare, or whatever— she is failing as a mother if she does something ridiculous that no one in their right mind would do, because they know that’s what you do if you want to die. 🙂
 
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So basically you’re saying the innocent unborn child doesn’t have any rights unless the woman carrying it looks pregnant. How is that just or fair to the innocent unborn child? Is an innocent unborn child not still a fully legally separate person with full constitutional rights no matter what?

The person with the weapon is the one in control of the situation. It is there responsibility to do everything in their power to protect any victim.

Are you saying that the woman and the innocent unborn child are not separate human beings with separate equal rights?
 
In most of the developed world, police officers don’t carry guns and those countries have very low rates of gun violence. But that’s not the topic of this thread.
 
They do not and I will not respond to you from here on out.
 
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PhiriTalk said:
So basically you’re saying the innocent unborn child doesn’t have any rights unless the woman carrying it looks pregnant.
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No, I’m saying I live in RealityLand, and people can’t take other people’s rights into account unless they’re aware of their existence.

If I live next door to a police officer, and I’m friendly with him, and talk all about how I’m expecting a baby in June, and then he gets a call to my house for a Domestic Violence call, and I attack him with a meat cleaver because I’m so upset, and he shoots me— he’ll probably aim for my ankle or something similarly disabling. Because he knows I’m pregnant.

But if I’m a random traffic stop, and I’m high on drugs and out of my mind, and I lurch out of my vehicle with a baseball bat, and I run full speed at him because goshdarnit, I don’t want a $200 speeding ticket— and he’s never seen me before in his life, and he has no clue that I’m pregnant, and all he knows is that he’s about to get smashed with a bat— his training will kick in and he’s going to shoot for center body mass, and I’ll deserve it.

You should spend a similar amount of time focusing on the irresponsible mother in your scenarios, rather than obsessing over the non-psychic police officer’s reaction to an attacker.
 
So is abortion okay if the government doesn’t know that a women is pregnant?

Why do innocent unborn children only have rights some of the time in your view and not all of the time as all other people do?

The mother didn’t kill the child though, the police officer did. That’s the central conceit of this entire scenario.
 
@PhiriTalk regarding your earlier remarks:

Nobody in this thread said that unborn children don’t have rights.

Nobody in this thread said that unborn children have rights only some of the time.

Nobody in this thread said that abortion is ever okay.

And finally: oh golly gee whillickers look at those goalposts gallop.
 
The city next to my hometown has had a large number of officer-involved shootings in the last decade.
 
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