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 said the Suffolk Police Department "conducted an investigation resulting in charges producing an abortion or miscarriage by Tammy Skinner."
Illegally inducing an abortion carries a maximum 10-year prison term, officials said.
Glad you asked: There is virtually no talk of imposing punishment on the mother. For the butchers themselves it will vary from state to state. I've read anything from loss of license and probation to 1-10 years in prison depending on circumstances.
Related:
Roe v Wade made abortion “legal” through all nine months of pregnancy. The word “legal” is in quotations because this Supreme Court decision created a Constitutional “right” to abortion that is nowhere remotely found in the Constitution itself. Roe and its companion case Doe v Bolton, ruled that state laws that banned or restricted abortions were unconstitutional and cannot be enforced. Many states still have these laws on their books, which could be enforced if Roe is overturned. Therefore overturning Roe v Wade would not make abortion illegal but would allow the 50 state legislatures to decide the law via the democratic process. Reports vary but it is estimated that some 30 states would ban or restrict abortion.
A BRIEF SURVEY OF US ABORTION LAW BEFORE THE 1973 DECISION
By Brian Young (excerpts)
http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/LIFBFROE.TXT
In the years prior to and immediately after the American Revolution, colonists and citizens followed the rule of law brought by British settlers, the "common law." Rather than being a code of statutes passed by a legislature and printed in a book, the common law was a set of legal standards established in England through court decisions and legal custom.
According to Sir William Blackstone, the renowned 18th century English jurist, under common law, the abortion of a 'quickened' fetus was a 'very heinous misdemeanor.' At that time the penalty for misdemeanors could be severe; loss of a limb, confiscation of property or life in prison.
'Quickening' - when a pregnant woman first feels her child move - generally occurs in the fourth month. Scholars have noted that the common law requirement of a 'quickened' baby for the crime of abortion was probably based on a very practical consideration. Since there were no pregnancy tests in the 18th century, evidence that a baby's movement had been felt might have been the only way to establish with any certainty in a court of law that a pregnancy had existed.
The abandonment of the "quickening" requirement coincided with the 19th century discovery of how conception takes place. The public, lawmakers and jurists were becoming aware of the scientific fact that life begins when a sperm enters an ovum.
Abortion Statutes of the 19th & 20th Centuries (excerpts)
http://www.missourilife.org/law/preroe.htm
During the first decades of the 1800's, scientists began to understand the cellular basis of life and for the first time were able to observe the process of fertilization in mammals. As the stages of development became clear, it also became clear that abortion kills a living human being, no matter what the stage of the child's development. The resulting scientific knowledge about the process of conception and development led to efforts to enact stronger bans on abortion. In addition, scientific progress allowed for surgical means of performing abortion, and abortion was perceived to be on the increase. Beginning in 1859, the American Medical Association called for strong anti-abortion laws and vigorous enforcement of them. In view of the claim by twentieth century abortionists that physicians did this only to protect their own profession or solely to protect women's health, it is useful to quote the doctors themselves on why they wanted action by the states:
"The first of these causes is a wide-spread popular ignorance of the true character of the crime--a belief, even among mothers themselves, that the foetus is not alive till after the period of quickening.
"The second of the agents alluded to is the fact that the profession themselves are frequently supposed careless of fetal life; . . .
"The third reason of the frightful extent of this crime is found in the grave defects of our laws, both common and statute, as regards the independent and actual existence of the child before birth, as a living being.
"In accordance, therefore, with the facts in the case, the Committee would advise that this body, representing, as it does, the physicians of the land, publicly express its abhorrence of the unnatural and now rapidly increasing crime of abortion; that it avow its true nature, as no simple offence against public morality and decency, no mere misdemeanor, no attempt upon the life of the mother, but the wanton and murderous destruction of her child. . " Volume 12, Transactions of the American Medical Association, pp. 75-78 (1859).
The AMA adopted the recommendation described above and sponsored initiatives in all states, spurring most legislatures to enact strong prohibitions upon abortion that swept away the "quickening" distinction. In the remaining states, abortion remained prohibited by common law.
A BRIEF SURVEY OF US ABORTION LAW BEFORE THE 1973 DECISION
by Brian Young (excerpts)
http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/LIFBFROE.TXT
Pro-abortion historians claim that these laws were passed primarily, if not solely, to protect women from possibly fatal abortions. Concern for pre-term babies was not a factor, they claim. Yet, as law professor Joseph Dellapenna has noted, all surgeries at that time involved substantial risks of death. If legislators were motivated to pass anti-abortion statutes only to protect women, why did they not protect other patients by banning other potentially dangerous fatal elective surgeries?
Coincidentally or not, during this period of pro-life legislative activity Congress passed and 28 states ratified the 14th Amendment, prohibiting any state from depriving "any person of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law."
By 1910, every state except Kentucky had passed an anti-abortion law (and Kentucky's courts had declared abortion at any stage of gestation to be illegal).
By 1967, not much had changed. In 49 states, abortion was a felony; in New Jersey, it was a high misdemeanor. Furthermore, 29 states banned abortion advertising, and many outlawed the manufacture or distribution of abortifacients. In 1967, though, state abortion laws began to change, but only after years of organized campaigns by pro-abortion forces.
The American Law Institute (ALI) proposed, in its 1959 model criminal code for all the states, a "reform" abortion law. The model bill, approved by ALI in 1962, declared that abortion should be permitted for the physical or mental health of the mother, for fetal abnormality, and for rape or incest.
While leaders of the American legal community were promoting radical changes in state abortion law, a 1962 case in Arizona generated sympathetic press coverage of the notion of "justifiable abortion."
Mrs. Sherri Finkbine, a married mother, made public her intention to abort her fifth child. She had taken some tranquilizers/sleeping pills her husband had brought home from a trip to England. The pills turned out to be Thalidomide, a drug that had become associated with birth defects. Fearful of giving birth to a handicapped child, Mrs Finkbine traveled to Sweden, where she had her baby aborted.
In June 1967, the American Medical Association voted to change that body's long-standing opposition to abortion. With a new resolution, the AMA now condoned abortion for the life or health of the mother, for a baby's 'incapacitating' physical deformity or mental deficiency, or for cases of rape or incest.
That same year, Colorado, North Carolina, and California became the first states to adopt versions of the ALI "reform" abortion law. By 1970, though, four states - New York, Alaska, Hawaii and Washington - passed laws that basically allowed abortion on demand. Of those four, New York's was the only law without a residency requirement and the state quickly became the nation's abortion capital.
The pro-abortion onslaught was beginning to face opposition, though, as pro-life forces organized. In 1972, the New York legislature voted to repeal the state's liberal abortion law, but Governor Nelson Rockefeller vetoed the repeal. Ballot questions in Michigan and North Dakota in 1972 attempted to decriminalize abortion; the measures were defeated by majorities of 63% and 78%, respectively.
Just as pro-lifers were beginning to turn the tide however, the Supreme Court handed down Roe vs Wade in January 1973. With one judicial stroke, over 200 years of legal protection for the unborn was rendered null and void. For the first time in American history, abortion was the "law of the land".
In the following article, the author reveals how Roe v Wade was forced, using many lies, upon a nation which did not want or ask for abortion to be made “legal” – It is time for the truth to be exposed.
CONFESSION OF AN EX-ABORTIONIST
http://www.aboutabortions.com/Confess.html By Dr. Bernard Nathanson
I am personally responsible for 75,000 abortions. This legitimizes my credentials to speak to you with some authority on the issue. I was one of the founders of the National Association for the Repeal of the Abortion Laws (NARAL) in the U.S. in 1968. A truthful poll of opinion then would have found that most Americans were against permissive abortion. Yet within five years we had convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to issue the decision which legalized abortion throughout America in 1973 and produced virtual abortion on demand up to birth.
How did we do this? It is important to understand the tactics involved because these tactics have been used throughout the western world with one permutation or another, in order to change abortion law.
THE FIRST KEY TACTIC WAS TO CAPTURE THE MEDIA
We persuaded the media that the cause of permissive abortion was a liberal enlightened, sophisticated one. Knowing that if a true poll were taken, we would be soundly defeated, we simply fabricated the results of fictional polls. We announced to the media that we had taken polls and that 60% of Americans were in favor of permissive abortion. This is the tactic of the self-fulfilling lie. Few people care to be in the minority.
We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000. Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law. Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalizing abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place illegally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1500% since legalization.
THE SECOND KEY TACTIC WAS TO PLAY THE CATHOLIC CARD
We systematically vilified the Catholic Church and its "socially backward ideas" and picked on the Catholic hierarchy as the villain in opposing abortion. This theme was played endlessly. We fed the media such lies as "we all know that opposition to abortion comes from the hierarchy and not from most Catholics" and "Polls prove time and again that most Catholics want abortion law reform". And the media drum-fired all this into the American people, persuading them that anyone opposing permissive abortion must be under the influence of the Catholic hierarchy and that Catholics in favor of abortion are enlightened and forward-looking. An inference of this tactic was that there were no non-Catholic groups opposing abortion. The fact that other Christian as well as non-Christian religions were (and still are) monolithically opposed to abortion was constantly suppressed, along with pro-life atheists' opinions.
THE THIRD KEY TACTIC WAS THE DENIGRATION AND SUPPRESSION OF ALL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION
I am often asked what made me change my mind. How did I change from prominent abortionist to pro-life advocate? In 1973, I became director of obstetrics of a large hospital in New York City and had to set up a prenatal research unit, just at the start of a great new technology which we now use every day to study the fetus in the womb. A favorite pro-abortion tactic is to insist that the definition of when life begins is impossible; that the question is a theological or moral or philosophical one, anything but a scientific one. Foetology makes it undeniably evident that life begins at conception and requires all the protection and safeguards that any of us enjoy.
Why, you may well ask, do some American doctors who are privy to the findings of foetology, discredit themselves by carrying out abortions? Simple arithmetic at $300.00 a time 1.55 million abortions means an industry generating $500,000,000 annually, of which most goes into the pocket of the physician doing the abortion. It is clear that permissive abortion is purposeful destruction of what is undeniably human life. It is an impermissible act of deadly violence. One must concede that unplanned pregnancy is a wrenchingly difficult dilemma. But to look for its solution in a deliberate act of destruction is to trash the vast resourcefulness of human ingenuity, and to surrender the public weal to the classic utilitarian answer to social problems.
AS A SCIENTIST I KNOW, NOT BELIEVE, KNOW THAT HUMAN LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION
Although I am not a formal religionist, I believe with all my heart that there is a divinity of existence which commands us to declare a final and irreversible halt to this infinitely sad and shameful crime against humanity.
Dr. Nathanson has since converted to Catholicism, being baptized in 1996.
Dr. Nathanson was co-founder in 1969 of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws — NARAL — later renamed the National Abortion Rights Action League. He was also the former director of New York City’s Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health, then the largest abortion clinic in the world. In the late 1970’s he turned against abortion to become a prominent pro-life advocate, authoring two major Pro-Life works: Aborting America and The Hand of God, and producing the powerfully revealing video, The Silent Scream. Dr. Nathanson is currently Clinical Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at New York Medical College and a visiting scholar at Vanderbilt University.
In The Hand of God, Dr. Nathanson writes, "I have aborted the unborn children of my friends, colleagues, casual acquaintances, even teachers" (p.61). He also aborted his own child. He writes, "Yes, you may ask me...[W]hat did you feel? Did you not feel sad -- not only because you had extinguished the life of an unborn child, but, more, because you had destroyed your own child? I swear to you that I had no feelings aside from the sense of accomplishment, the pride of expertise. On inspecting the contents of the bag I felt only the satisfaction of knowing that I had done a thorough job. You pursue me: You ask if perhaps for a fleeting moment or so I experienced a flicker of regret, a microgram of remorse? No and no. And that, dear reader, is the mentality of the abortionist: another job well done, another demonstration of the moral neutrality of advanced technology in the hands of the amoral" (pp.60-61).
Related Internet resources:
Innocent blood: How lying marketers sold Roe v. Wade to America
By David Kupelian
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42462
THE RIGHTS OF THE UNBORN
http://www.priestsforlife.org/government/stevens3.htm
WHY CAN'T WE LOVE THEM BOTH, ch 7
http://www.abortionfacts.com/online_books/love_them_both/why_cant_we_love_them_both_7.asp
Government, Law, and Political Responsibility for Life Issues
http://www.priestsforlife.org/government/polresp.html
Roe v Wade Report
http://www.calright2life.org/RoevWade.htm FROM:
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