Can a fetus be murdered?

Gerardo “Jerry” Flores is awaiting trial in Texas on murder charges

after the death of his girlfriend Erica Basonia’s twin fetuses. He

allegedly stepped on her stomach in order to kill them. The teen was

charged under the state’s law protecting unborn children. Basonia,

who was five months pregnant, told investigators she had been

attempting to kill her unborn children for a number of weeks before

asking Flores to step on her stomach. Despite her admission, Basonia

cannot be charged because the Texas law, which is similar to laws in

other states, does not allow prosecution of mothers because they have

a legal right to terminate their pregnancy.

Should the girlfriend also be charged in the matter, despite the

limits of the law? Can the law be changed without addressing the

question of abortion, or is a showdown inevitable?

From all the research I could do, it seems that abortions are

legal in the state of Texas up to 24 weeks, or six months. Basonia

was well within the legal time limit to have an abortion.

A clinical answer was available to her. Texas law only requires

parental notification, not consent, so that would not hinder her from

getting a clinical abortion.

Her boyfriend didn’t seem to want the children, so it is unclear

why she felt it necessary to resort to this kind of behavior.

Her way (beating them to death) was less violent than abortion.

The Feminist Women’s Health Center says that abortions over 13 weeks

are done by dilation and extraction. This is the controversial

“partial-birth abortion” that has dominated the news, also called

“intact dilation and extraction.” The child is pulled from the womb

with forceps while keeping the head inside. A sharp object is used to

penetrate the skull and the brain is suctioned out, causing the skull

to collapse. This allows the head to exit easier.

Abortion provider Abortion Advantage of Texas says an “injection

of medication is made into the amniotic fluid surrounding the

pregnancy to assure that it will be stillborn and will not experience

any discomfort during the procedure.”

Like the Terri Schiavo case, why are they so worried about the

comfort of the patient if it isn’t human or doesn’t have feelings?

I am sorry I am so graphic, but we need to realize that the

violence the girl inflicted, with the help of her boyfriend, is no

worse than the violence she would have inflicted on her twin boys had

she done it in a clinic. It is impossible to say that one is crueler

than the other.

I don’t believe Texas law can prosecute her. I do believe she

needs some strong parenting. Why is a teenager living with her

boyfriend and his family in the first place, and why didn’t someone

in that situation do something to educate her on how not to get

pregnant in the first place?

It does, however, bring to the foreground the dichotomy that

exists in laws across our nation and the fact that we have never

really come to terms with the 30 million babies we have lost. Of

which, I was almost one, but a doctor could not be found in 1966 to

do the procedure.

RICK OLSEN

Senior Associate Pastor

Harbor Trinity

Costa Mesa

Why was this young girl unable to find someone to turn to for help

with her unwanted pregnancy?

Desperate attempts to cause a miscarriage were more common when

abortion was a crime. Erica is a teenager, and her family would not

allow her to have an abortion. Only later in the pregnancy, when she

began to show, did she insist upon ending the pregnancy and then take

these extreme steps. This situation makes plain why parental

notification or permission should not be required for an abortion,

and why lack of access or funds should also not be deterrents.

In Texas, 93% of the 254 counties have no abortion provider,

making it difficult for people with limited resources (financial and

otherwise) to make use of health services. Only 4.6% of the abortions

in Texas were obtained by minors. According to Texas Public Health

records, of all abortions obtained, 74% are by unmarried women. We

don’t need statistics to know that an unmarried teen is likely to be

in most need of an abortion. The bigger picture is that 43% of

American women will have an abortion by the age of 45, and that no

one should find herself in Erica’s situation.

Why are murder charges being brought against the boyfriend,

Gerardo? He is a victim of legislators who want to criminalize

abortion. Recent laws have purported to give added protection to

pregnant women by penalizing those who harm a fetus by violent

attacks. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s alternative version of

the “Unborn Victims of Violence Act” proposed use of the term “fetus”

but the final bill deliberately used “unborn child.”

Anti-abortion leader Samuel Casey explained, “In as many areas as

we can, we want to put on the books that the embryo is a person ...

that sets the state for a jurist to acknowledge that human beings at

any stage of development deserve protection -- even protection that

would trump a woman’s interest in terminating a pregnancy.”

In the case of Gerardo and Erica, we see how these laws will be

twisted and used for purposes far different from protecting a woman

from violent criminal attack.

There is a small but disproportionately influential group of

people determined to refuse to allow a woman to have the legal right

to make her own choice about whether to have an abortion. But a

common ground that can be shared by both abortion-rights supporters

and anti-abortion advocates should exist in seeking to prevent

unwanted pregnancies and to reduce abortions. This view, articulated

by Catholics For a Free Choice leader Francis Kissling and endorsed

by Sen. Hillary Clinton and Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen,

proposes widespread public agreement in areas such as support for

family planning, sex education, contraception, access to reproductive

healthcare, prenatal care and substance abuse programs.

Abortion-rights advocates can be genuinely concerned about

abortion being too prevalent, about some decisions to have an

abortion being made too casually or for very poor reasons, and the

difficulties or regrets some women and men may feel -- without

lessening their support for abortion as a legal right.

Gerardo and Erica urgently need education, counseling and many

other kinds of assistance. They do not need national publicity and

criminal court drama to serve the anti-abortion political agenda.

THE REV. DEBORAH BARRETT

Zen Center of Orange County

Costa Mesa

Despite the revulsion with which any sane person greets this

abominable act, I stand with those who do not subscribe to a right to

be born.

Western religious traditions have identified various points of

“ensoulment” and this mystery is best left as one of the secrets of

God. Judaism marks emergence from the mother as the moment when a

fetus becomes fully human. It does not accord the fetus rights from

the moment of conception or at any stage of development. It considers

the fetus to be a part of the mother and not a person entitled to be

born.

A “being” composed of 128 cells is not human, nor a citizen of the

United States. Conflicting religious positions on when the embryo

becomes fully human should remain in the realm of theology, not

public policy. Because an embryo is not a living person, there should

not be any penalty for the deliberate prevention of a fetus coming to

term. To my mind, the murder of Laci Peterson was not accompanied by

the murder of a separate person: the fetus she carried. There is no

parity between woman and fetus that offers equal religious and moral

worth to both.

Genesis speaks of man becoming a living being by virtue of having

the breath of life breathed into his nostrils. The term that

describes a human being is “nefesh,” and the fundamental quality of a

nefesh is breath. Since nefesh means human being, and since nefesh

means a person who breathes, then a fetus is not a nefesh, a human

being.

While there is considerable debate in legal circles over whether a

fetus is a human being with rights under the Constitution, and there

is abundant controversy in religious communities over when the embryo

becomes “ensouled” and thus attains personhood, there is no question

that the woman is a human being. While this case refers to a woman

who chose, I can only assume while in the depths of desperation, to

terminate her pregnancy in a particularly horrendous fashion,

criminal prosecution should not be the state’s response.

RABBI MARK S. MILLER

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach

Because emotions rage at both ends of the continuum of

perspectives on abortion, I suspect that this will occasion a “Texas

showdown.”

Whether the law can be changed is a question for legislators and

lawyers. Whether Erica Basonia should be charged along with Jerry

Flores is a question for those who sit in judgment.

Regarding judgment, I fully expect that each and every one of us

will be surprised at the end of this body-bound life when we stand

before the Throne of Judgment. Some of us will be surprised that

there is such a judgment. Others will be surprised to learn who is

sitting on that throne. Most will be surprised that it is not a

Throne of Judgment but the Throne of Grace.

All of us will be wise to ponder now whether at that moment we

will ask for justice or beg for mercy. Justice rests on logic and is

something for which we should all work. Christians realize that grace

rests upon love and that, while justice teaches us, God’s graceful

mercy saves us and that the justice and mercy of the one on the

throne are ultimately one.

THE VERY REV. CANON

PETER D. HAYNES

Saint Michael & All Angels

Episcopal Parish Church

Corona del Mar