Free Republic

“I didn’t drink because I’m Native," said Melissa Rose, an Akwesasne Mohawk midwife. "I drank to survive colonialism."

The Oregon Supreme Court this month passed a landmark ruling that will change the way animals are treated under the law in the state for the better. The ruling will ensure that any animal can be seen as a legal “victim” in a case, affording animals more basic rights to protect them from abuse. The ruling was made on the case of a man who was convicted of starving 20 horses and goats on his property. The judge’s decision allotted a separate count of second-degree animal neglect for each animal, noting that each animal was a separate victim on his...

Florida Governor Rick Scott on Friday signed into law harsher penalties for crimes in which a fetus is harmed or killed, no matter how early in the pregnancy. The legislation drew passionate support this spring from a Florida woman whose boyfriend tricked her into taking pills known to induce abortion during the initial weeks of a pregnancy. The new law allows offenders to be charged with a separate crime for causing harm to a fetus at any stage of development, even if the perpetrator did not know the woman was pregnant. Prior Florida law applied only in limited circumstances and...

Oklahoma lawmakers are close to approving a bill that allows pregnant women to use deadly force to protect their unborn children. State lawmakers passed the Use of Force for the Protection of the Unborn Act this week and if the Senate approves it in a final vote, as expected, it will be sent to the governor's desk. The bill was crafted after a Michigan woman who was carrying quadruplets stabbed and killed her boyfriend after he struck her in the stomach. The woman lost the babies and was convicted of manslaughter.

As president of the Harvard Law Review and a law professor in Chicago, Senator Barack Obama refined his legal thinking, but left a scant paper trail. His name doesn't appear on any legal scholarship. But an unsigned — and previously unattributed — 1990 article unearthed by Politico offers a glimpse at Obama's views on abortion policy and the law during his student days, and provides a rare addition to his body of work. The six-page summary, tucked into the third volume of the year's Harvard Law Review, considers the charged, if peripheral, question of whether fetuses should be able to...

SUFFOLK — The defense attorney for a woman accused of shooting herself in the stomach and killing her unborn child says an abortion charge won’t hold up in court. Suffolk’s lead prosecutor says his office is still investigating the crime. Tammy Skinner, 22, is charged with inducing an abortion and filing a false police report. Prosecutors have already said they plan to drop a firearms charge because it doesn’t apply. Virginia Beach lawyer Kevin Martingayle, who met with Skinner on Friday, said he doesn’t think the abortion charge applies either. “All of the provisions of the law are aimed at...

SUFFOLK -- A 22-year-old pregnant woman shot herself in the stomach last week and aborted her unborn child, Suffolk police said Tuesday. Police arrested Tammy Skinner of Nancy Drive in Suffolk and charged her with illegally inducing an abortion, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and filing a false police report, said Lt. Debbie George, a police spokeswoman. Skinner was due to give birth last Thursday, the day she was found with a gunshot wound in her stomach at a downtown Suffolk car dealership. Court documents filed Monday to seal two search warrants in the shooting...

In October, 25-year-old Robert Elliott pleaded guilty to four charges, including attempted first degree homicide of an unborn child. Thursday, he was sentenced for his crimes. Lincoln County (WI) District Attorney Don Dunphy calls this case one of the most heinous and vicious crimes he's ever seen. Back in January, 25-year-old Robert Elliott repeatedly beat his pregnant wife, intending to harm their unborn child, and abusing her in front of their children. Prosecutors say Elliott's abuse caused major trauma to the fetus...his wife eventually miscarried. He pleaded guilty to charges in October, and his reportedly violent outbursts were reason enough...

Honolulu, Dec. 02, 2005 (CNA) - Yesterday, the Hawaii state Supreme Court handed over a precedent-setting opinion, ruling that 32-year old Tayshea Aiwohi could not be convicted of killing her unborn child, because at the time, it was not a “person.”In July of 2001, Aiwohi gave birth to her son, Treyson, who died two days later due to his mother’s use of methamphetamine while she was pregnant.She was initially convicted of manslaughter but was able to appeal the decision all the way to the high court. To date, no appeals court in the U.S. has ever upheld an manslaughter charge...

CHEYENNE -- One of the many people following the Lander "meth baby" case was Rep. Elaine Harvey of Lovell. The Republican lawmaker is the chief sponsor of the 2004 felony child endangerment law the defendant, Michele Ann Foust, 31, was charged under. Harvey said Wednesday she is having an amendment drafted to make it clear the law applies to an unborn child as well as a child. The lack of a clear definition in the law caused District Judge Norman Young to dismiss charges against Foust. "I thought we were covered. The intent was to protect unborn children but apparently...

A teenage boy who was charged in January with intentionally beating his pregnant girlfriend's belly with a miniature baseball bat, thereby inducing a miscarriage, has pleaded "no contest" to the charges and will not serve any jail time. The teen, now 17, awaits a juvenile sentencing or disposition on the charge Sept. 29. Macomb County (Mich.) Prosecutor Eric Smith, who said in January that "this crime is shocking and reprehensible," and "I will not entertain any plea bargaining on it" defended his leniency by saying "It's not a plea bargain or a sentence bargain. He pleaded as charged," … "The...

Richmond Township, MI (LifeNews.com) -- A teenager who was responsible for using a miniature baseball bat to answer his girlfriends request to cause her to have an abortion will probably not serve any time in jail after reaching a plea agreement. The teen could also have the conviction wiped off of his criminal record. At a hearing Wednesday before Macomb County Juvenile Judge Matthew Switalski, the now 17 year-old entered a no contest plea to a charge of assaulting a pregnant woman and causing a miscarriage. The charge normally puts a criminal in the adult system behind bars for approximately...

The Oregon House rejects a change to a bill that would apply the death penalty for killing pregnant women SALEM -- It appears the 2005 Legislature will end without an agreement on whether the death penalty should apply to someone who murders a pregnant woman -- or whether the death of her fetus should be counted as a second murder. The House on Wednesday refused to approve a Senate-passed amendment to House Bill 3037, which would expand the death penalty to include the crime of murder of a pregnant woman. Instead, the House voted 50-8 to send the bill to...

LUFKIN, Texas (AP) -- The would-be teen mother arrived by ambulance last May, her belly bruised, the twin fetuses she carried for five months gone and her lips tightly sealed. Authorities assumed 16-year-old Erica Basoria had been beaten and they charged her boyfriend, Gerardo "Jerry" Flores, 18, with murder under the state's new law protecting the unborn. But it wasn't that simple. Miss Basoria told authorities she had been trying to kill the fetuses for weeks and finally asked Mr. Flores to help by stepping on her stomach.

CHICAGO, February 9, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The in vitro fertilization industry is worried that a Chicago court decision in which an embryo was ruled to be a ‘human being,’ could put an end to IVF and abortion. On Friday, February 4th, Cook County Judge Jeffrey Lawrence ruled that a couple’s wrongful death lawsuit for the death of their embryonic child at a fertility lab could go forward. The decision is likely to be overturned very quickly but it can be considered a landmark case, being the first time any court in the US has acknowledged that a human being and...

A frozen embryo destroyed in a Chicago fertility clinic was a human being whose parents are entitled to file a wrongful death lawsuit, a Cook County judge rules Friday.Attorneys on both sides of the abortion issue said it was the first such ruling they have heard of as the country debates whether stem cells derived from embryos can be used in research and medicine.Alison Miller and Todd Parrish hoped to conceive a child with help from the Center of Human Reproduction, but the one fertilized egg the couple created was thrown out in error by a clinic worker.Friday, Judge Jeffrey...

Texas high court rules 8-1 the parents of a stillborn baby can't sue hospital< P>AUSTIN - The parents of a stillborn child cannot sue medical practitioners for negligence because a fetus is not a "person" or "individual" under state laws, the Texas Supreme Court has ruled. The court in an 8-1 ruling overturned a decision of the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth that Tara Reese could sue a Fort Worth hospital for the mental anguish she suffered after her baby died in utero in 1998. Lawyers for Reese had urged the court to follow 37 other states that...

Murder charges include fetus The case against Ruby Pena's boyfriend may test state's homicide definition. By Christina Jewett -- Bee Staff Writer Published 2:15 am PDT Wednesday, August 18, 2004 The Sacramento County District Attorney's Office is leveling double homicide charges against a man accused of killing his 16-year-old girlfriend and her 1-month-old fetus, potentially leaving a jury to define the age an unborn baby must reach to qualify as a victim of murder. A 1994 state Supreme Court decision said a murdered fetus must be 7 to 8 weeks old for prosecutors to charge homicide on its behalf. The...

Posted on Mon, Jul. 26, 2004 Pregnant woman wants re-entry to U.S., lawyers say fetus is citizen Associated Press LOS ANGELES - Lawyers for a deported Mexican woman who is eight months pregnant are seeking her return to the United States to protect the unborn baby's health. They also say under federal law the fetus is a viable human being and thus may be eligible for citizenship rights. That argument sounds like a long shot to some on both sides of the immigration debate. But in May, a U.S. District Court judge in Kansas City, Mo., approved a stay of...

LOS ANGELES - Lawyers for a deported Mexican woman who is eight months pregnant are seeking her return to the United States to protect the unborn baby's health. They also say under federal law the fetus is a viable human being and thus may be eligible for citizenship rights. That argument sounds like a long shot to some on both sides of the immigration debate. But in May, a U.S. District Court judge in Kansas City, Mo., approved a stay of deportation for a pregnant Mexican woman after raising, among other concerns, the question of whether her fetus could be...