Last session, the Leg expanded the definition of individual to include a fetus. However, the same law excluded the mom as a defendant. That exemption was made to avoid prosecution of mom for abortion, but was it written too broadly?

A man is jailed on murder charges as his girlfriend claims she planned to end pregnancy

By LISA FALKENBERG
Associated Press

LUFKIN - The would-be teen mother arrived by ambulance last May, her womb empty, belly bruised and lips tightly sealed.

The twin fetuses that 16-year-old Erica Basoria carried for five months had slipped into the bathroom toilet while her boyfriend and his family slept. They awoke to her cries and called 911.

Basoria had bruises on her eye, arm and wrist, so authorities assumed she had been beaten. Her boyfriend, 18-year-old Gerardo "Jerry" Flores, was charged with murder under the state's new law protecting the unborn.

But it wasn't that simple. Basoria told authorities she had been trying to kill her unborn sons for weeks and finally asked Flores to step on her stomach.

Does anyone see the irony in this development?

Bill would apply law to owners
Austin-American Statesman


If two lawmakers have their way, Texans soon will no longer be able to get away with killing a puppy with their lawn mower, skinning and decapitating a feral cat or burning a rabbit alive.

Those and other heinous acts, which local authorities have been unable to prosecute or win convictions for, would be outlawed under bills filed by state Sen. Chris Harris and Rep. Toby Goodman, both Arlington Republicans, according to supporters.

The measures -- SB 172 and HB 326 -- would make it a crime to kill your own animal in a cruel manner, where law now covers someone killing only another person's animal in a cruel manner.

Will the new legislation require affirmative answers to several questions before authorizing lethal injection?

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Originally posted by John Bradley:
Last session, the Leg expanded the definition of individual to include a fetus. However, the same law excluded the mom as a defendant. That exemption was made to avoid prosecution of mom for abortion, but was it written too broadly?

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Since the law also exempted Mom from prosecution for intoxication manslaughter (see P.C. 49.12) I have to disagree as to the intent of the Leg. If the idea is only to prevent pregnant women from being prosecuted for legal abortions, then they went way too far.

Under the law, a pregnant woman, who knows she is pregnant, drinks too much to drive (which she presumably knows is bad for the fetus in the first place) then kills the fetus by accident, is unprosecutable. A non-pregnant woman, who may drink all she wants without endangering a fetus, but who then drives and causes the death of a one, has committed a felony. I think both women should be precutable, but it seems to me the first woman is worse, since she knowingly endangered her baby. The legislature disagrees.

Not only that, if a woman does as the woman in the article did, and "aborts" her child illegally, she cannot be prosecuted, but if she gets help from anyone else, they can be sent to prison for the conduct that the "mother" solicited.

If the idea was to protect a woman's right to a legal abortion, then why not make it a defense for a legal abortion? What they wanted to do, I believe, was prevent the prosecutors who were starting to charge women with injuring and killing their babies by using drugs or engaging in other dangerous behavior while pregnant. While there might have been a legitimate concern about overreaching (say, prosecution of pregnant women who smoke or forget to take their vitamins), they went WAY too far in excepting out of the statute everything that a pregnant woman could do to her fetus.