Do you think it's fair?

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urge

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guilty of tricking girlfriend into taking abortion pill, surrenders to authorities

Read more: http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/ne...-pill-surrenders-to-authorities#ixzz2rozQaGqJ

if she had aborted without his consent it would have been fine. He aborted without her consent and he goes to prison. How is that fair?

Last I heard they were both equally responsible for the child. If this is not true then no man should ever be required to recognize a child or pay alimony.
 
Seems pretty steep. 15+ years seems like a long sentence for a non-murder charge.

Every guy should know about this case, though. The idea of being tied to a crazy chick through a mutual child can drive some guys consider desperate things.
 
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He was not convicted of the correct crime. If we wanted to be consistent, every abortion performed would be murder. Whether or not his sentence is appropriate or not would actually be a reasonable matter of discussion. How exactly to classify/label/name the crime could also be a reasonable matter of discussion. In my opinion his sentence was reasonable. Im not sure what name though I would give to the crime.
 
if she had aborted without his consent it would have been fine. He aborted without her consent and he goes to prison. How is that fair?

Last I heard they were both equally responsible for the child. If this is not true then no man should ever be required to recognize a child or pay alimony.

There is a significant legal difference between a fetus and a child.
 
There is a significant legal difference between a fetus and a child.
So, are you proposing that the father gets the legal right to kill the baby in the first 3 months to level the playing field?

Is this where you envision this going?
 
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So, are you proposing that the father gets the legal right to kill the baby in the first 3 months to level the playing field?

Is this where you envision this going?

The question that I suspect that is being danced around is, would an assault type of charge and sentence be more appropriate than a murder type charge and sentence?
 
Unless I missed it, the article didn't say what he was convicted of.
 
Sentenced to 13 plus years in jail. What else do you want?
Is it under assault, because he purposely mislabeled medication?

Murder for killing a fetus? Because ethically there would be more substance to this debate if he's liable for killing the fetus- because then you can compare it to maternal abortion.
 
Life isn't fair, men and women aren't equal, film at 11?


if she had aborted without his consent it would have been fine. He aborted without her consent and he goes to prison. How is that fair?

Simple, a fetus is not a person. Legally (and morally/ethically IMO) it's a lump of cells that's part of the woman's body until viable outside of her at 24ish weeks, which is why she can do what she wants with it until that point.

He has neither rights nor responsibility for that lump of cells - however cute it may look on 3D ultrasound - until it is born and it becomes his child.

He certainly committed a crime. He drugged another person without consent and brought harm to part of her body. Whether the sentence was fair or not could be endlessly debated.


Disclaimer: DNRTFA
 
The U.S. Attorney countered that Lee will never see her unborn child, whom she named Memphis, but Welden's family can always visit him.

Lee's parents, grandfather and cousin also testified that Welden robbed them of seeing Memphis grow up and robbed Lee of being a mother.

Read more: http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/ne...-pill-surrenders-to-authorities#ixzz2rpbwZxaH

Unbelievable double standard crap.

If she had had the abortion against his will nobody would care about the guy.
 
If this is murder, so are all abortions. Based on current abortion law (the embryo is not a human being, hence it can't be murder), this should be assault and battery (like all unconsented medical treatments).

I think our society should decide about this matter once and forever; it can't be human just when the woman wants it to be human, and just a thing when she doesn't.

John Andrew Welden faces up to 15 years in prison at his sentencing hearing scheduled for Dec. 5.

Until then, he is free on supervised release on charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and tampering with a consumer product.

He could have faced life without parole had he been convicted of murder under the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act," a charge that was brought when he was first arrested in May.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...inducing-drug-article-1.1450158#ixzz2rpv0IlPZ
If this guy's sentence is not reduced on appeal, I am seriously contemplating not doing any more abortions. He deserves to be punished severely, but 13 years is a disgrace for something women do every day. I'm all for women's rights, just not for double standards.
 
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So, are you proposing that the father gets the legal right to kill the baby in the first 3 months to level the playing field?
Is this where you envision this going?
I'm not sure what the point of your deliberate obtuseness and clumsy ad adsurdum statement is. There is no requirement for a "level playing field". The fetus does not spend 19 weeks gestating in the man's body either. So what?

However, again, the point is that there is a significant legal difference between a fetus and a child. He pled to product tampering and mail fraud; the murder charge was dismissed (prosecution was over-reaching).
 
That's a made-up charge. I bet they promised him to drop some kind of manslaughter/murder charges if he pled guilty to the rest. Why plead guilty otherwise?

Product tampering my arse. He printed his own fake label and put it on an empty pill bottle. He did not take a pharmacy-labeled bottle and changed its contents. What if he had just put the Cytotec in her drink?

Same with mail fraud. That's a long shot too, had he had a jury trial.

He is a despicable human being, but this is cruel and unusual punishment.
 
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So, are you proposing that the father gets the legal right to kill the baby in the first 3 months to level the playing field?

Is this where you envision this going?
I see two equal rights options either
A- the woman is also responsible for the baby at conception or
B- the man has the right to sever legal ties to his unborn child
 
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deliberate obtuseness and clumsy ad adsurdum statement is. There is no requirement for a "level playing field". The fetus does not spend 19 weeks gestating in the man's body either. So what?.


If you are coming here arguing with your hoity toity words, you better spell them correctly or you will end up looking silly in the end.

Anyway, while the courts come up with a way for the man to have an abortion without needing her consent, this guy should be set free.

Anything else would be discrimination.
 
She put her at risk. He played with her body and health. He does not deserve to be free.
 
She put her at risk. He played with her body and health. He does not deserve to be free.
He wanted a perfectly legal unilateral abortion. What options did he have?
 
Her body was not his. That's assault and battery, at minimum. He should have used a condom.

I agree that it's a dual standard to not allow men to decide about abortion, and at the same time ask them to pay for child support if the mother unilaterally decides to keep the baby. But what can one expect in a PC-obsessed world?
 
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I'm not sure what the point of your deliberate obtuseness and clumsy ad adsurdum statement is. There is no requirement for a "level playing field". The fetus does not spend 19 weeks gestating in the man's body either. So what?

Not the man's fault. Why can a woman unilaterally kill a fetus but a man cannot?
 
article-2344554-1A670E75000005DC-582_306x423.jpg
 
And she believed that was amoxicillin? That's what they called "product tampering", a federal crime? 🤣

Wow, that guy should file a malpractice suit against his lawyers.
 
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Not the man's fault. Why can a woman unilaterally kill a fetus but a man cannot?

I explained this to you in post #13, above:

Simple, a fetus is not a person. Legally (and morally/ethically IMO) it's a lump of cells that's part of the woman's body until viable outside of her at 24ish weeks, which is why she can do what she wants with it until that point.

He has neither rights nor responsibility for that lump of cells - however cute it may look on 3D ultrasound - until it is born and it becomes his child.

He certainly committed a crime. He drugged another person without consent and brought harm to part of her body. Whether the sentence was fair or not could be endlessly debated.

In the eyes of US law, a woman having an abortion pre-24weeks isn't killing anything. She's excising a lump of cells from her body. A man doesn't have the right to excise a lump of cells from her body without her consent. You may not agree with this view, but this is how the law is in the United States.


You're asking the wrong question ("Why can a woman unilaterally kill a fetus") so you'll never get a satisfying answer. I suspect you're not really even looking for an answer; it's just a rhetorical strawquestion so you can complain about the evil you perceive abortion to be.

And OK, go ahead, gripe about abortion if you like, but please quit pretending to not understand what's going on here.


I see two equal rights options either
A- the woman is also responsible for the baby at conception or
B- the man has the right to sever legal ties to his unborn child

B would be acceptable to me, but 50.9% of the population will never go for that. Oh well. Life's not fair, but it's not like we don't all know the rules before getting in bed.
 
Every guy should know about this case, though. The idea of being tied to a crazy chick through a mutual child can drive some guys consider desperate things.

Are you suggesting the girlfriend in this case was crazy? I didn't see anything to suggest that. On the other hand, the report says that Weldon's lawyer had a psychiatrist testify that Welden was addicted to pot since he was 15 and has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It's fairly clear where the crazy was in this case.

Any guy of any age should be aware that the best way to make sure that a woman doesn't have his child against his will is not to have sex with her.
 
In the eyes of US law, a woman having an abortion pre-24weeks isn't killing anything.

"The eyes of US law" - including the Supreme Court - previously stated that slavery was OK, and that the slave was simply property.

This debate is not the first time American jurisprudence has attempted to deny someone's humanity. It was wrong last time, and it's wrong this time too.
 
"The eyes of US law" - including the Supreme Court - previously stated that slavery was OK, and that the slave was simply property.

This debate is not the first time American jurisprudence has attempted to deny someone's humanity. It was wrong last time, and it's wrong this time too.
If you are bringing slavery into it, how come it's not enslaving a woman when you make her carry a fetus she doesn't want?
 
...how come it's not enslaving a woman when you make her carry a fetus she doesn't want?
Make her? How does one actually go about doing this? Via threats? Something else? C'mon.
 
Make her? How does one actually go about doing this? Via threats? Something else? C'mon.
By making it impossible (either legally or in practice, for instance by passing laws or by killing medical providers) for her to have an abortion, of course.
 
If you are bringing slavery into it, how come it's not enslaving a woman when you make her carry a fetus she doesn't want?

Slavery is defined by Oxford as the state or condition of one person being the legal property of another, and being forced to obey that person. I don't see how outlawing murder causes one person to become the legal property of another. On the contrary, you are arguing for a scenario where the unborn baby is the legal property - not in the parental sense, but in the sense that one is allowed to destroy her own property - of her mother.
 
I absolutely think it is fair that this guy got hard time for assault. Put on hold for a moment the issue of abortion, if we substituted GHB or meth for the misoprostol in this case, I don't think anyone here would argue that he's justified. As such, he did wanton unwanted damage to her body and he should be punished for that. But are we seriously arguing that he was justified in this case? If he didn't want her to get pregnant, he should have either made sure that multiple, reliable forms of contraception were used or just abstained.

As for abortion, I don't personally agree with it. That is largely because I can't answer for myself the question of when life begins. As such, I defer to the moment of conception and default to a "I couldn't support an abortion by my SO" stance. But I also wouldn't demean a person because they chose to get one, because I can't "definitively" answer the question of "when does life begin?"
 
Put on hold for a moment the issue of abortion, if we substituted GHB or meth for the misoprostol in this case, I don't think anyone here would argue that he's justified. As such, he did wanton unwanted damage to her body and he should be punished for that.


They are not similar drugs, plus they are condemned by society. Why not substitute them for acetaminophen?

I cannot fathom how people are content with women unilaterally aborting but a man has to go to jail for it. If she wanted to abort she would have taken the same misoprostol and nobody would say a word.

Not the same if she would have taken meth willingly. People would say she is a bad mother.

Your analogy is deeply flawed.
 
They are not similar drugs, plus they are condemned by society. Why not substitute them for acetaminophen?

I cannot fathom how people are content with women unilaterally aborting but a man has to go to jail for it. If she wanted to abort she would have taken the same misoprostol and nobody would say a word.

Not the same if she would have taken meth willingly. People would say she is a bad mother.

Your analogy is deeply flawed.

It is flawed because you choose to overlook the relevant points. Man knowingly puts a woman into position to ingest a substance which subsequently causes her harm. The substance itself isn't the point. It is that he knowingly caused her harm. It doesn't matter if it is acetaminophen, St. John's wort, or her OCP. Change it to whatever you want, that doesn't change his guilt. She was given a medication under the guise of a legitimate prescription, which he tampered with, in an effort to bring about harm.

The issue of unilateral abortion is a straw man here. He assaulted her and should go to prison. If you (the general you, no you @urge ) don't want to worry about a child, use multiple forms of contraception or remain abstinent. And contraception fails. If that is the case, hire an attorney and voluntarily have your parental right terminated. It is possible in my state, and I'm guessing it is possible in a lot of states. If you can't afford an attorney, look into legal aid. Or don't engage in activities that produce children without taking the proper precautions. Life isn't fair. But while that is the way things are, play the game by the rules or make sure you are firmly entrenched on the sidelines.
 
However one feels about abortion, we should be able to agree that the man shouldn't be forced to pay child support for his unwanted child as long as the He needs to be able to give up his legal claim to the child while the mother gives up her claim to child support if she gives birth. This needs to be settled in court to protect equality for all men, not the way he did it.


Bingo. A smart judge would have seen this clearly.
 
It is flawed because you choose to overlook the relevant points. Man knowingly puts a woman into position to ingest a substance which subsequently causes her harm. The substance itself isn't the point. It is that he knowingly caused her harm. It doesn't matter if it is acetaminophen, St. John's wort, or her OCP. Change it to whatever you want, that doesn't change his guilt. She was given a medication under the guise of a legitimate prescription, which he tampered with, in an effort to bring about harm.

The issue of unilateral abortion is a straw man here. He assaulted her and should go to prison. If you (the general you, no you @urge ) don't want to worry about a child, use multiple forms of contraception or remain abstinent. And contraception fails. If that is the case, hire an attorney and voluntarily have your parental right terminated. It is possible in my state, and I'm guessing it is possible in a lot of states. If you can't afford an attorney, look into legal aid. Or don't engage in activities that produce children without taking the proper precautions. Life isn't fair. But while that is the way things are, play the game by the rules or make sure you are firmly entrenched on the sidelines.
A woman can endanger herself aborting and it is not an issue. Why is it an issue now?
 
A woman can endanger herself aborting and it is not an issue. Why is it an issue now?
Are you seriously asking the difference between a person voluntarily engaging in some behavior and ingesting some substance and someone doing it without their consent? Seriously? Because she accepts the risks, is aware of them, the benefits, and alternatives. Why do you put anyone on the table at all? Because they believe your procedure can help them, and they are willing to accept the risks. Please tell me you are trolling.
She wasn't given that option. She had unwanted contact, resulting in harm to her. I don't have to be an attorney to know that is battery. Look, I don't disagree that it sucks. But there are ways to prevent this situation from coming up. Instead of looking for an out for guys because we think it is unfair, why not just keep ourselves (not you, not me, but men in general) out of the situation.

As it were, I was coming to report that voluntary termination of parental rights is a slow, arduous process because courts want the child supported. It is possible, but it is not easy or fast. Mea culpa if I inferred that it was.
 
However one feels about abortion, we should be able to agree that the man shouldn't be forced to pay child support for his unwanted child as long as the woman has the right to kill her unwanted child.
That doesn't give him the right to assault her. He needs to be able to give up his legal claim to the child while the mother gives up her claim to child support if she gives birth. This needs to be settled in court to protect equality for all men, not the way he did it.



Bingo. A smart judge would have seen this clearly.[/quote]

A "smart judge" is obligated to follow the law. he was charged under the The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004.
The law defines "child in utero" as "a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb". He could have faced life in prison
The bill contains a specific exception for an abortion. Her choice. Not his, under the law.
 
A woman can endanger herself aborting and it is not an issue. Why is it an issue now?
Wow I can't believe anyone would make this argument even. A woman a undergo a medical procedure and give informed consent for this procedure. Same goes for ingesting a medication.
The boyfriend can not make medical decisions for her without her consent. He tricked her and did harm to her body. That is illegal.
 
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