Johnny Northside has been blogging about a body found in North Minneapolis, and his commentors seem to have broken the story that it was a pregant 15-year-old girl who was found frozen and murdered. KARE11 reports on the effect this killing has had on the girl’s community. The case also brings to the forefront Minnesota’s 1986 fetal homicide law, in which the death of a fetus during the commission of a crime is treated as a homicide. Under that law, the fetus was the 38th homicide victim this year, but the law has its detractors.
Murder of pregnant teen
Dec 30 2008 — 4:08pm
9 Reader Comments
4:34 pm
Why haven’t they caught the man that did this? Why? He could be in Canada by now.
4:39 pm
Interestingly, our fetal homicide law is quite a bit stronger than the one laid out by the Bible itself. From Exodus 21:22: When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine.
Certainly the young girl’s murder should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but what do people feel about treating the death of a fetus in this circumstance as a homicide?
5:03 pm
I’ve been following this story via Johnny Northside for a while, and it was amazing the information people were willing to share through comments. It was a great to see the safety and anonymity of the Internet being used for good instead of trolling.
5:05 pm
Thanks for bringing this up.
I’m amazed that the Strib wrote a lengthy, front-page article about this without once even hinting at the unborn child law, when it was enacted and how often it’s been used.
6:58 pm
Fetal homicide is a perfectly legitimate crime, in my mind. A mother’s right to choose is exercised no matter what decision she makes, and the taking of her life is also the taking of that choice.
9:22 pm
I think fetal homicide is perfectly legitimate if that fetus would have a chance at life if born at the minute of the crime. At 7 months gestation, that fetus could realistically have been viable.
11:25 pm
I’m with Aliecat. I also think the knowledge of her pregnancy plays in as well– she was visibly pregnant and whoever killed her could see that she was pregnant. Whoever killed her intended to kill her and the fetus.
8:56 am
Leaving an abortion debate aside, I would simply understand if this is an inconsistent position to be both pro-choice (which I’ll go out on a limb and guess most mnspeakers are) and pro-fetal-homicide-law. I think is depends on what your pro-choice argument is.
If you use the sort of Singerian argument which is basically that a fetus has all of the intellect and sentience of a pig and pigs are made from bacon – then in this case you’re basically saying abortion is murder, but you’re for giving the owner of the kid the choice to commit murder. Which would be inconsistent, I hope.
On the other hand, if you use the “you wouldn’t force me to donate a kidney” argument, it’s sort of like killing someone who’s on life support, which, of course, is still homicide.
The former’s always seemed stronger for me, but I think I could be swayed.
10:21 am
.. or we could all just talk about the Insight Bowl. Yes, let’s do that.