British Court Denies Compensation to Girl Poisoned Before Birth

Submitted by fathers4fairness on Sun, 2015-02-01 23:04

Article here. Excerpt:

'A mother who inflicted lifelong damage on her child after drinking heavily during her pregnancy did not commit a criminal offence, the court of appeal has ruled.

The unanimous decision sets clear limits on the legal rights of the unborn child and dispels fears that women could become liable to prosecution for their lifestyles during pregnancy.

The claim was brought by a local authority in the north-west of England which now cares for the young girl, now seven, who is suffering from foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. She was not identified.

The council argued that the girl, known as CP, was entitled to payments from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. The authority declined to compensate on the grounds that there had been no crime of violence.

The case revolved around section 23 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, which created the offence of poisoning and requires the victim to be “another person”. The three judges – Lord Justice Dyson, Lord Justice Treacy and Lady Justice King – agreed for the purposes of the law the unborn baby was a “unique organism” but not a person.

Treacy explained that the main reason for dismissing the application was that the damage caused to the unborn baby by heavy drinking was caused while the child did not have a separate existence in law.'

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testing. My original comment cant seem to make it thru and I have removed the certain word. I'm testing to see if this comment makes it.

edit: I'm going to try and post one paragraph at a time, so I can narrow down the 'forbidden' word:
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Cases like these are of interest to me. Studying ethics and morality has always intrigued me and the issues surrounding 'rights to the unborn' pushes my thought process. I have come to the conclusion that the unborn should have rights, I have come to this conclusion from a non-religious perspective.

Nature has assigned the responsibility of producing healthy offspring onto females. I think society should also hold women to this responsibility if they should become pregnant.

In this story we have a pregnant women who brought her unborn child to term. She drank heavily while pregnant. The little girl is now cared for by the state and the mother has no contact. I presume there is no father. If expecting mothers cannot not stop drinking on their own, I would be supportive of laws which would allow society to lock them up so they cannot harm their unborn child.

This is why I always say promiscuous women cause the downfall of society.

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Submitted by Kris on Tue, 2015-02-03 04:37