“No mens rea, no murder. More like an accidental death. That protection would NOT apply to those who were neither misinformed nor coerced.”
Hang on, are you saying the women do not have the intellectual capacity to know right from wrong and cannot comprehend homicide of a child?
What about the mother of the six month old child that under the coercion of her boyfriend murders the baby?
I’m an attorney. You need mens rea to make out a murder charge. If you have a teen who’s being told it’s not a baby yet, by everyone in her world, not just doctor and family, but the entire culture, and you combine that with coercion, no court well-grounded in the traditional view of murder is going to find mens rea (guilty mind).
BTW, it’s not about intellectual capacity. It’s about what your life situation has conditioned you to believe. Some very smart people believe some very stupid things. We see it all the time here on FR.
Peace,
SR