William Kelly was charged with killing Christine Falzone by blunt force trauma in New Hampshire last December. At the time of her death, Falzone was 35-37 weeks pregnant, i.e., less than a month away from giving birth.
Is William Kelly guilty of one crime? Or two?
8 month fetus (YouTube screengrab)
New Hampshire – while not exactly the most prolife state (there’s an effort afoot to write abortion-on-demand into the state constitution) – charged Kelly with two counts of second-degree murder. The Granite State, like 37 others, permits homicide charges if a violent act causes the unborn child’s death.
Is New Hampshire – and 37 other states – guilty of undermining “reproductive choice?”
That’s how pro-abortionists have tried to paint Alabama because of its state Supreme Court’s February 16 ruling involving in vitro fertilization. Pro-abortionists pretend that the decision bans in vitro fertilization (IVF) and is the next creeping step to an American Gilead. The truth is that the Alabama case was brought by two parents who used IVF to create a child. The clinic’s security procedures were lax. An unauthorized person got into the cryogenic storage section and destroyed their embryo.
Those parents were clearly injured. But under what law could they claim an injury? They sued under the state’s wrongful death of a minor statute which had long been recognized to cover the death of an unborn child through actual malice or negligence. The clinic tried to get off by saying the law only covered embryos implanted in a woman’s uterus, not those in the frozen embryo section of the IVF clinic. The Alabama Supreme Court refused to accept that distinction and held the clinic liable.
Now, if we were to listen to the pro-abortionists claiming this ruling was wrong, the aggrieved parents who lost their embryo would have had only two alternatives: to sue the clinic for property damages (their embryo was irreparably damaged, not unlike a totaled car) or to be told, “sorry, Charlie, but your loss. Maybe we’ll give you a discount next time.”
Alabama may be prolife. New Hampshire is not that strongly prolife. But both states recognize that, at least for certain purposes, the law has to protect unborn children: in Alabama’s case, from negligence, in New Hampshire’s, from criminal assault.
In the name of protecting “reproductive justice,” should the Alabama parents be denied justice for the loss of their unborn child? Did they only suffer “property damage?” And should William Kelly face no account for the death of a child in the eighth month of pregnancy?
Canada – which has no abortion regulations at all at any time prior to birth – also has no law allowing recourse for the loss of a preborn child through criminal action. Is that what protecting “abortion rights” means?
Let’s be honest. That’s why a fetal homicide law has been blocked in Canada. And those who want to make political hay out of the Alabama IVF case are saying the same thing, refusing to admit that a child prior to birth can ever have any separate rights prior to birth.
This same problem came up in 2017 in Texas. A mass shooting occurred in Sutherland Springs, where a gunman murdered people at a Sunday church service. Like Falzone in New Hampshire, Crystal Holcombe was eight months pregnant. When Devin Kelley opened fire in that church, did he commit 25 murders? Or 26?
One boy was one month prior to birth. One boy was one year after birth. Did only one boy count?
Ask your local “pro-choice” politician to explain that difference. Why should Noah Holcombe count and Carlin Holcombe not?
When that politician insists that the unborn child is a “clump of cells” or “part of a woman’s body,” ask him or her whether to let William Kelly off on one count of second-degree murder.
Let’s even engage in a thought experiment. Let’s imagine that Christine Falzone survived but lost her baby. She did not want to lose her child. So, could a second-degree murder charge be brought for that baby’s loss? Or was the “only” crime the assault on her? And – if the unborn child is just “part of the woman’s body” as those politicians who “do not believe in science” act – then what crime would an assault resulting in miscarriage constitute? “Especially” aggravated assault?
How do you rank the injuries for civil tort compensation purposes? Is a baby miscarried in the eighth month “worth” more or less than, say, a collapsed lung that might accompany such assault? If you treat a prenatal child as simply part of its mother’s body, then you have to start assigning values, just as when insurance companies pay less for a lost toe than a lost leg.
Is that the kind of country we really want to be?
Do you imagine these same politicians would be parroting the same line if a police officer were accused of wrongly shooting a pregnant minority woman if the result killed her and her baby? Or – perhaps even more problematically – if he killed the baby but injured the woman? There are such cases. Does anyone believe that, in the name of “reproductive justice,” the loss of that child under such circumstances would just be written off?
The fact that the vast majority of Americans are at least ambivalent about abortion-on-demand and that that proportion increases along with the gestational age of the unborn child indicates a visceral awareness of the humanity of that child that advocates of abortion refuse to admit because they fear their whole narrative will then unravel.
That’s why some people feel a need to lie about the Alabama IVF ruling. Or when life begins.
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