Prison for Homemade Abortion

I’ve written about at least one other case like this one. But, considering who’s in power these days, that the Senate Dems have already bent over and reached for the lube, and that William Rehnquist is probably planning an exit…well, stories like this bear repeating.

A 19-year-old in Texas is going to prison for helping his girlfriend with a homemade abortion.

A 19-year-old accused of causing his teenage girlfriend to miscarry two fetuses by stepping on her stomach was convicted Monday of two counts of murder.

Gerardo Flores received an automatic life sentence because prosecutors did not seek the death penalty, which was available under the state’s 2003 fetus protection law.

Erica Basoria, 17, acknowledged asking Flores to help end her pregnancy; she could not be prosecuted because of her legal right to abortion.

The defense contended that Basoria punched herself while Flores was stepping on her, making it impossible to tell who caused the miscarriage.

…Texas law defines an embryo or fetus as an “individual” and allows criminal prosecution or civil action for a preventable injury or death of a fetus. The law exempts health care providers who perform a legal medical procedure, such as an abortion.

Maybe it’s extreme to say that we can expect to see more of these. Maybe it’s alarmist, but as the right encroaches on reproductive freedom—requiring parental permission and defining a fetus as an “individual”—it makes sense that we’ll eventually see more cases of “homemade abortions,” and more prosecutions of in those cases. With three more years left in Bush’s term, and the near certainty that at least a couple of Supreme Court Justices will retire, it’s clear we’re heading for a day of reckoning on Roe in the courts. When the dust settles, it very likely that reproductive choice will be severly restricted, if not dust-binned altogther.

Since the Senate compromise on judicial appointees indicates that the Democrats are willing to overlook the egregious qualities of some candidates, and that the president hasn’t shown the slightest tendecy to nominate more moderate candidates for top spots, it’s a pipe dream to think that his first (second, or third) Supreme Court nominee will be remotely moderate. It’s beyond a pipe dream, actually. It’s downright delusional.

Expect Scalia and Thomas clones. And expect more case like this one.