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
I have to believe that “guilty mind” is an extreme oversimplification of mens rea. Just because an abortionist doesn’t believe they are committing murder or at very least homicide, doesn’t make them any less guilty of the charge. Of course the law considers abortion differently than that, but if the law were changed and a state decided that their law on abortion was that it was manslaughter, then there should be no escape from that fact. Ignorance of the law is not a defense.
If you have a teen who’s being told it’s not a baby yet, by everyone in her world
what a ridiculously low standard to set for mens rea...accepting homicide because we’ve infantilized the intellect of the perpetrator...
Then how on earth do they ever charge Vehicular Homicide?
“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).”
That’s an interesting defense strategy.
Suppose a 19 year old mother is put on trial for the murder of her two week old baby that she tossed in an abortion clinic dumpster after stabbing her baby with an ice pick and tearing the baby’s limbs off.
No one directly involved in her life made it clear to her that here baby was a real baby.
Therefore, she does not have a guilty mind.