Prosecutors in the Ariel Castro case have come upon an innovative means to attack reproductive rights. The prosecutors want to file charges based on Castro's suspected premeditated and brutal murder of at least one fetus. This will allow the prosecutors to push for the death penalty. To many, the only appropriate punishment for a heinous crime such as that which Castro has alleged committed, the repeated rape of children(at least one victims was likely a child at the time), should be the death penalty. Unfortunately, our laws do not allow such a punishment. So, to some, it is reasonable to apply a risky legal theory to achieve such ends. Many will say that it is this time only.
Of course this plays directly into the hands of those pro-life supporters who wish to value the fetus much more than the life a women. If this legal theory is validated, that the killing of the fetus is more of a crime than the rape of a women or beating of women, where will it end? A pregnant women who miscarries due to alcohol, being involved in an auto accident, flying on plan, or working, will be charged with murder independent of the viability of the fetus? A doctor who aborts a fetus to save a woman's life is guilty of murder? A minor whose baby is stillborn because she hid the pregnancy has to be investigated as a criminal?
The fight up to now has been that a women who miscarries is not to be assumed a criminal because the fetuses life is insignificant compares to that of a grown woman. A conviction of Caatro based on the murder of a fetus which might or might not have been viable will be a significant event in ending that assumption.
Just to be clear, this precedent will value the fetus above the life of a woman. The crime here is that three women were kidnapped and repeatedly raped, two when they were children(teens if you wish, but not adults). One may have a child from the rape. The crime that must be punished is the attack against the women. We cannot send a message to child molesters that as long as you don't harm the fetus you will not be punished to the maximum extent of the law. The message must be that if you attack women you will be punished, even if you did not mean it, or thought she wanted it, or are popular in the town and everyone thinks you are swell and no one wants to ruin your future.
The sad truth is that many do not want to punish the people who rape adults, teens, or even children. If this were a concern it would be possible to pass laws that set the maximum penalty for the repeated rape or gang rape of a child or teen, or even adult, as death. Certainly in Ohio, where the Steubenville football players gang raped a 16 year old girl, could, over the past 9 months, have at least introduced and debated such a law. Another big death penalty state, Texas, where an 11 year girl was raped over a period of months, coincidently near a town named Cleveland, could have passed such legislation during the current session.
Neither have. Each state has little problem sentencing criminals to death and carrying out those sentences, even if the criminal is incapacitated or the quilt is questionable. In the past 10 years Ohio has sentenced over twenty people to death for the murder of one individual, not necessarily in the conduct of felony, perhaps only in fit of rage. Are we to believe that the gang rape of a minor is less heinous that the murder of a single person in a fit of rage? Or is that we do not want to routinely sentence men to death simply because the happen to feel like having repeated se with an unwilling minor. Certain cases we can apply other laws, if we wish.
In fact, if Ohio had acting quickly and enacted the death penalty for gang rape or repeated rape of a minor, then the prosecutors would have gotten exactly what they wanted. The opportunity to put Castro to death. Unfortunately, in the eyes of many, it would have been for harming a women, not harming a fetus. Furthermore, if Ohio had passed such legislation, it would have meant that, in the future, football players that gang raped a drunk minor would have to face the prospect of being put to death, not just having their future destroyed by a felony, which seemed to be a the forefront of concern in parts of the Steubenville community. This, I guess, is why Ohio, or Texas, or any number of other states, does not treat gang rape of children with the same intensity it treats the murder of an single adult.
Now, I do not think the death penalty is a deterrent. I do not think that any human has the right of the mandate to kill another human. What I do see is a states that does believe in the power in the death penalty is using the death penalty and the populations desire to punish this one crimes as a mean to minimize a woman's value.
I believe that if Castro is punished based n the killing of a fetus it will be further indication that, to many, the value of women, after she it born, is to pleasure and provide baby's for men. That there is no intrinsic value in a girl or a woman beyond what she can provide for any man who is willing and able to take her.