Body believe to be missing worman found

Source: ABC news

Authorities say they have arrested the boyfriend of a missing pregnant woman on murder charges, and have recovered a body they believe to be hers.



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3309769

the "un-stories" and feel they are a diversion from the real problems; however, my heart breaks for her, her family, and that baby. :cry:

He's a police officer

the other day. Why is CNN saying he did it? What about the fetus?

she was 9 months preggers.

She may have been nine months pregnant, but until the child is born, it's medically considered a fetus.

I still remember a few things from nursing school. Even if it can live ex-utero, until it is removed, it is a fetus.

never thought of it that way! Learn something new every day:hi:

not to mention other issues that will prevent women from CHOICE.

Based on no important votes, NARAL has disingenuously given Harry Reid 100% on Pro-Choice. However, as little as four years ago he was rated 29% = Pro-Life Senator.

Senator Reid offers something special for the minority spot, because he is one of the first powerful Democrats in a long time who is devoutly pro-life:

Voted YES on criminal penalty for harming unborn fetus during other crime. (Mar 2004)
Voted YES on banning partial birth abortions except for maternal life. (Mar 2003)
Voted YES on maintaining ban on Military Base Abortions. (Jun 2000)
Voted YES on banning partial birth abortions. (Oct 1999)
Voted YES on disallowing overseas military abortions. (May 1999)
Rated 29% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)

Interesting how NARAL covers up the above voting record? :wow:

was creating this fetus against her will?

If not your position is anti-choice.

If we cross into that ambiguous (viability) ground, the right wingers will "slowly but surely" make LEGAL abortion a federal crime.

I'm thinking about other related issues ... this being a political message board and all. :shrug:

murder charges for the deliberate, malicious killing of a VIABLE, WANTED fetus ready to deliver.

However, I kid you not: You give the fundamentalist right wing Christians and inch, they'll take a mile.

Either "a fetus is a fetus" OR "a fetus is a person."

Yes, I hate this choice, but those of us who wish to continue Reproductive Rights can not LEGALLY have it both ways.

If you state that "a fetus" is a person ONLY WHEN it is wanted, then it will default to "a fetus is a person."

It has to remain, "a fetus is a fetus" lest we eventually (thanks to a Catholic SC) lose our right to the Morning After Pill or legal first trimester abortions.

It is tough, but there's no in between with regard to "the law." :shrug:

p.s. if you use the "viable" argument, you are getting into ambigous territory. What if this child has a birth defect that would make it still born, health of the mother, etc. NO, we can't have it both ways. :(

It can be illegal to force someone to have an abortion without making abortion illegal. Part of being pro-choice is to protect the ability to make choice. I see no problem with separate charges, especially if the fetus could have survived outside of the womb.

The factual elements are hard to clarify, but it's not impossible. That's what the prosecutor's job is supposed to be. If they can't meet their burden, then no conviction.

A person has to sign all sorts of things before medical procedures (including abortion), which differentiates them from random yahoos trying to transplant your kidneys or drill into your teeth. Although I completely agree with you about the anti-choice intentions behind some of the legislation, there is a compromise.

The baby would have been born on July 3. If the baby had died from natural causes, this would be classified as a fetal death, not a miscarriage. Definitely viable at this stage.

Charging someone with murder of a nine-month fetus isn't going to hurt abortion rights. It's just not relevant at that point of development. The only reason to ever consider aborting a fetus that far along would be protect the life of the mother.

And as far as viability, how can you honestly determine that, when that very issue of viability was taken away? If you kill the mother and her fetus before the fetus is born, it's ok? I'd like to think you see the problem there. This fetus would likely have been born in a couple weeks if this hadn't happened.

A woman's right to choose is VERY different than another person IMPOSING that choice, and that is what happened here.

Otherwise, free reign on attacking pregnant women's bellies to just kill the fetus. Can you imagine living in a place where that is ok?

Voluntary versus involuntary.

Once you make the leap from "fetus" to "unborn child" you are giving the religious right wing all kinds of permission to *qualify conception* as the same. :shrug:

Consider this: wanted vs. unwanted. A woman has a LEGAL abortion but is charged with murder because the man who impregnated her WANTED the baby? :crazy:

No one can absolutely determine *viability* until the baby is birthed. :shrug:

Can we say *Pandora's box* once you SLIP from the terms "fetus" to "unborn child" on the basis of amorphous terms such as "wanted" and "viability outside the womb?"

It is someone ELSE taking something of value from another person.

You are a woman, and so am I. I'll be damned if I wouldn't want someone charged and convicted who kicked me in the belly while pregnant causing the loss of my child/fetus. We would have someone charged for taking our stereo, purse, car, etc, why not something that is part of our body?

I really don't want to argue, but this slope is not as slippery as you think it is.

It is OUR choice. Why would you grant a criminal the right to take that right from us while arguing the government can't?

freedoms will be curtailed. We can NOT allow ourselves to LEGALLY go there otherwise we are covertly kicking open the door for the religious right wing to qualify "a fertilized egg" as "an unborn child." :(

If you/your sister/your best friend/your mother/your neighbor was 9 months pregnant and some asshole came up and bashed the pregnant belly causing the loss of a wanted baby, what would your reaction be?

And I mean, REALLY, what would you do or want to do?

I'm against capital punishment, but I admit that I would have to dig down deep within my heart and soul to forgive (and NOT right away) if someone murdered any member of my immediate family.

The true question is: Do you wish for women to LEGALLY have reproductive choice?

If the answer to the above is *YES,* then LEGALLY you must adhere to firm definitions of what exactly constitutes "a fetus" and what constitutes "a child."

It is not a hypothetical scenario at all. It happens all over the place, sadly like the topic of this thread.

Would you want the person charged or not? Forgiveness is not part of the question I posed.

I'm not going to play into the hype because you know "the emotional" answer to this question. :eyes:

However, you can't half-step this when it's emotionally convenient for society because you are opening the door to all kinds of demented definitions by the religious right, i.e., opening the door to eventually denying women's reproductive freedoms.

Before birth = "fetus" and
After Birth (viable) = "a child"

Now we can deem more strict sentences for killing a potentially viable fetus (7 months +), but no, I don't think the man should be charged with murder.

No consequences for TAKING a choice from a woman...woo hoo!

And all in the defense of a woman's rights.

Hyperbole, how sad. :(

How so?

GOVT response.

Sure we'd probably all would like to strangle the perp with our bare hands but we cannot allow our GOVT to do it in our name. One is an emotional response to an injustice the other is a legal response to a crime.

It's just that it could be called Feticide rather than murder.

What's so tough about that? If the label "murder" in not used, it's OK? Not so.

Let's just call it "terrorism" and be done with it.

When they say "abortion is murder" they are doing the same thing. Abortion is abortion, not murder. If they want to say abortion is evil, why doesn't the right wing just say so, rather than insist it be relabeled "murder" thus making the term vaguer?

With each of my kids we started planning before birth the room, the clothes, the everything.

I and many like me love our children from the moment we know that they will enter our lives, and I have grieved with close friends the heartbreak of a miscarrige. If someone were to take from me a loved and hoped for child yet unborn I would feel the pain of a murder in my family. And I would want justice.

Everyone can make their own choice, but for me, my choice for my children from conception has been life, and anyone who would take that from them, at any time, is a murder, period.

It's a UNBORN CHILD (fertilized egg) that's being MURDERED after all. :crazy:

I'm sorry, really - I understand the emotions. However, we can not LEGALLY have it both ways. :shrug:

As horrific as this crime is, if the father is convicted of killing both the mother and the fetus (which an unborn child is) then this slowly chips away at reproductive rights. What will stop the anti-choice crowd from criminalizing birth control or the day after pill?

In my opinion, for what it is worth, the father should be charged with one count of murder only.

That is basically a full term baby.

This is the beginning of chipping away at abortion rights. Once you can consider a fetal death "murder", you've given it child status.

It's just one step from "killing a pregant woman takes two lives" to "abortion is murder".

What is the point of giving someone 2 life sentences w/o the possiblity of parole?

Charging someone for murdering a fetus is only a way to set legal precidence.

What of the case where the fetus is killed but not the mother? It could still be prosecuted as a crime - feticide. It would not be "OK" as some insist it is simply for not labelling it "murder."

.. at 9 months, this was not a fetus, it was a human being.

The girl's due date was in 1 week. That is sickening. The child could have lived on it's own, had it not been murdered.

"wantedness" determines humanity?

the term is anti choice.

:shrug:

I'm sending my money to Cecile Richards and Planned Parenthood from now on.

Several news items just now coming up all say the same thing. Here is one of those:

http://www.postchronicle.com/news/original/article_21288295.shtml

Bobby Cutts Jr Arrested: Murder Charge After Jessie Davis Body Found
By Mike Baron
Jun 23, 2007

Bobby Cutts Jr Arrested In Jessie Davis Case - Bobby Cutts Jr is in custody and has has reportedly confessed to killing Jessie Marie Davis.

Police called a 6:00 p.m. news conference and had told the more than 50 search volunteers to stop searching.

The Canton Repository had reported that investigators found the body in Meyers Lake earlier in the day. However, the body of Jessie Davis was found in a National Park and surveilance video showed an area where a lake could not be seen. What could be seen is what appeared to be a shallow gravesite. Cutts Jr. is rumored to have led Police to the body.

instead of the "blessed" Death Penalty. :shrug:

and,no, I'm not sorry I said it.

all along about him. This is so sad, as was Lacy Peterson and all of the NON-wasp women who have gone missing because their partners are low-life sleazy psycopaths from hell! :cry:

Just wondering. I find all of them tragic, and they certainly haven't been lacking for coverage in the news just because they're not blonde.

why you imply the poster claimed they were more tragic?

I'm just wondering why.

that the media does not make as much of a big deal out of nonWasp cases.

You changed the point and attributed to the poster something the poster never said.

what she saw in this man. He was married...had kids from other women...on record for abusing another woman. Yeah, like I'd pick this guy to make babies with.
Poor choice is an understatement here. WTF was she thinking?

It seems he was servicing half the women of the town. It's like 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil'.

those worman are kinda rare around them parts ;o)

:spank:

where she can assume the boyfriend is guilty.

not calling 911 when she 'just stopped breathing' or whatever his story is....

a confession. This should take one show and the public should be bored with the judicial details after his confession.

all over our cable/broadcast TV screens. Us little people need our bread and circuses lest we become aware how these CRIMINALS are stealing our tax dollars along with our children's future. :(

how appropo!!

Police: Pregnant woman's body found; cop arrested
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/23/missing.woman/index.html


Boyfriend of missing pregnant woman arrested
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19387533/

..then we'd have all sorts of riled up hate. bor does a good job of this. Finds a situation where an illegal immigrant killed someone while driving drunk, and makes them ALL look like criminals. This is no more than another white man killing another white woman. Not much news here. But they'll suck it dry for all it's worth on the tabloid news networks in this pathetic media climate. What ever happened to news that matters??

or anything else, really.

And still rile up the hate.

One for the mom and one for the unborn child.

While I certainly believe that he intentionally caused the death of her fetus, it's not murder. Murder is for human beings, and you're not a human being until you're born alive.

:headbang:
rocknation

She was due to deliver on July 3. Considering the two-week window on either side of the due date, the baby was essentially full-term. She could have delivered the day she died, and the baby would have survived.

A fetus doesn't become a human being until it survives being born. You can destroy a fetus, and in this case, Cutts should charged with doing so. But only human beings can be murdered.

:headbang:
rocknation

a fetus, and so he was. I personally see absolutely nothing wrong with this law.

Now wether it's a live birth is another story. And then it's a different subject, not a question of whether or not its human.

I'm pro abortion but not in the 9th month. That's a little too close for my taste because they can survive off the life support of the mother. Now up to the 3rd or 4th month, no problem. I don't consider that chipping away at abortion rights. I do consider the mentality that it's okay to abort up to the 9th month, a definte way to end abortion rights though.

guess that's what/who the cable networks are going to be pimping for ratings this summer.

Sadly, you're probably right... I don't have issue with stories like this being reported, but I hate the way they become the main thing on the news.

The police publicized that the 2-year old said "Mommy was crying, she broke the table, she was in the rug." But if the father was there, the boy probably mentioned it, too--so why the cops would have kept it a secret? Also, if it's true that he was supposed to pick up the boy, WHY DIDN'T HE?

:headbang:
rocknation

not national news. not remotely. people get murdered every day.

While I agree with you that all murders should be national news, this one, for better or worse was particularly newsorthy

• Woman was 9 months pregnant
  
• 2 year old boy left alone
  
• Her mother found house ransacked
  
• a police officer is a suspect
  
• huge manhunt before she was found
  

Remember, this started as a missing person search.

The fact you actually yawned is mind boggling, to me!!!

How very apathetic! :puke:

Reminds me of Michael Moore's movie, "Bowling for Columbine".

the poster was decrying the fact that local news has become national news, taking the place of way more pressing issues like the war and the economy. Now if the AMOUNT OF MURDER COMMITTED IN AMERICA was on the nightly news - now that is national newsworthy. This selective sensationalism - usually involving a young, pretty white woman - is NOT.

The MSM's blatant disregard for non-white stranger abductions is infuriating. Agreed!

But when there is a stranger abduction, regardless of color of the victim,
it is a national story, to me, and it is not sensationalism.

Isn't that why Amber Alerts have been instituted? :shrug:

If there's any chance that the abductor has crossed state lines, it should be national news.

No sweat off my back for the one minute blurbs on my locals.

and scant mention of THIRTY troops killed last week - that is TABLOID JOURNALISM and I refuse to watch

comments about the woman being white extremely offensive. By the way, since she was likely carrying a bi-racial baby, does that make it more appropriate to report on her missing?

the knowledge that if this woman was black THERE WOULD BE NO COVERAGE - THAT IS WHAT IS OFFENSIVE. If you want to watch this f***ing trash HAVE AT IT but DO NOT delude yourself into believing it is RESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM.

Unless, of course, someone wants to use her death and the death of her unborn child/fetus/baby girl as fodder to push their own political agenda. Then I'm sure it's o.k. to talk about it. (Just don't mention she's not black, otherwise, it won't count.)

/sarcasm

all over the national and local news and in every newspaper in the USA!

N.Y. Woman Missing After Trip To South Florida
http://cbs4.com/local/local_story_168212000.html


Stepha Henry

Just google her name! And there have been others before her.

And Erika Pratt was in Time and all over the national news, just to name a couple.

Person of the Week: Erica Pratt
http://www.time.com/time/pow/article/0,8599,331695,00.html


Erica Pratt

She is nowhere on the airwaves or in the papers of Washington, D.C.

Pretty young white women are almost always the only one featured in this type of disappearance story.

edit to add:

Missing White Girl Syndrome Ends Here

By John Ridley

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/missing-white-girl-syndro_b_51632.html

Hardly a high visibility location for a "missing white woman" article. To be honest, other than perhaps the first day I don't recall her being on the front page at all.

The Post has a general section for smaller news around the country about mid-way through the A section. If there's a missing person story it's generally found there unless it is a local incident.

No Clues in Missing NYC Woman's Case

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/18/AR2007061801420.html

By MARCUS FRANKLIN
The Associated Press
Monday, June 18, 2007; 9:48 PM


In this undated photo provided by the Miami-Dade Police Dept.,
Stepha Henry is shown. Henry, was last seen by relatives at their
South Florida home on May 29 getting into a black sedan with a man.
Henry, who was visiting the area with her 16-year-old sister, said
she was going to a nightclub. Miami-Dade County police have said
they don't know if foul play is involved and Henry's case is under
investigation. (AP Photo/Miami-Dade Police Dept., HO) (AP)

NEW YORK --

Police have tracked cell phone signals and examined abandoned cars, yet there's
no trace of a woman who vanished last month after going to a Florida night club.

Miami-Dade County police have said they don't know whether foul play was involved
in Stepha Henry's disappearance, but family members think something happened to
the 22-year-old honors graduate of John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Henry was visiting relatives in the area with her 16-year-old sister and made plans
for a friend's brother-in-law to pick her up on May 29, her aunt Daffodil Samuel said
Sunday at the family's home in Brooklyn.

Relatives saw Henry get into a black sedan with a man. There is video of Henry at a
Sunrise nightclub and police have said they have questioned a man who told them he
left her at the nightspot.

No one has seen or heard from her since. Her cell phone goes straight to voicemail.

"She was a fighter," Samuel said of her petite niece. "I know they didn't take Stepha easily."

Samuel, who is the sister of Henry's mother, said her niece is fascinated by criminal cases
nd aspires to be a lawyer.

"She always wanted to be the lady Johnnie Cochran," Samuel said, referring to the late attorney
who became nationally known after winning an acquittal of murder charges for O.J. Simpson.

Samuel said her niece often resisted her mother's tendency to inquire about her whereabouts
and who she was with and once asked a relative to ask her mother to ease up.

"We just pray that whoever has her will release her so that she can come home and continue
her life," Samuel said just before bursting into tears. "We're trusting in God and believing
that He will do what He says He will do."

Henry's mother and father have been in Florida since the week their daughter went missing.
Her mother has posted fliers seeking information and plans to stay there to keep searching;
her father returned to New York on Sunday night.

"She is not going to leave Miami until we know what happened to our daughter," Steve Henry
said of his wife, Sylvia.

Is it exciting to be with a man that might snap any minute? It just doesn't make sense to me--but he was bedding half the women in Canton, Ohio so he had some kind of appeal.