Ruling: Pregnant Moms Can Now Harm Babies
Posted on December 1, 2005
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WND
The Supreme Court of Hawaii has ruled that unborn children are not “human beings,” and therefore women cannot be prosecuted for causing the death of babies by harmful behavior during their pregancies.
The unanimous decision overturns the manslaughter conviction of 32-year-old Tayshea Aiwohi, who was found guilty in connection with the death of her newborn son by smoking crystal methamphetamine shortly before his birth.
“I’m extremely happy and grateful,” said Aiwohi. “I believe [the case] changed me into a better person and I just hope to share that with others.”
So, responsibility goes out the window on this one. This irresponsible mindset is much too far reaching in today’s American society. Taking responsibility for one’s concious actions is fading fast. People need to realize that along with rights, comes responsibility, and with that responsibility our very rights and liberties hinge. Who takes responsibility for the death of this child? According to this court, no one.
Tayshea gave birth to her son, Treyson, July 15, 2001, but the boy perished within two days with high levels of methamphetamine and amphetamine in his system, according to the local coroner.
The woman allegedly admitted to using the drugs for three days before the birth and took a “hit” on the morning her son was delivered.
In their ruling, the justices cited statutes noting a crime needed to be committed against “a human being.” They declared since Treyson was not a “person” when Tayshea was smoking the drugs, she could not be prosecuted for harming the infant in her womb.
“The proscribed conduct must have been committed at a time when Treyson ‘qualified’ as a ‘person,’ defined by the Hawaii Penal Code as ‘a human being who has been born and is alive,’” they wrote.
“It is so insane,” Nancy Heisser of Grants Pass, Ore., told WorldNetDaily. “A little baby died, and the mother walks away scot-free. This is a travesty against this little one.”
What kind of future impact will a ruling like this have? Under the new, federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act, people other than the mother who cause the death of an unborn child can face prosecution. If this had been a boyfriend who had kicked the woman in the stomach, or pressured the drugs on her, there might have been a conviction. But according to this court, we are not even talking about a human being, so what does it matter. This is one horrible decision after another. From the decision to drugs while pregnant, to the decision of the Court to hold no one responsible for this irresponsible death. I wonder if after the case was over, this woman went out for another hit.
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30 Responses to “Ruling: Pregnant Moms Can Now Harm Babies”
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What is this world coming to? A baby is not a person because they have yet to be born? I am so sick and tired of this BS!!! Why is it when you want to have a child, you call it a baby. When you don’t want to have a child, you call it something else? What kind of mindset is that anyway - hypocritical I say.
She KILLED another human being by doing drugs and yet she will not have to pay the price? What kind of justice is that to little Treyson?? In a sick sort of way, I suppose it is better that he is home with God now rather than with the woman who conceived him (she doesn’t deserve to bear the name mother). Sounds like he’d have had a terrible and rough life with her. I hope she gets her life straight before it’s too late…
I just don’t understand what has happened to responsibility. It used to be that if you did something that was against the law and if it hurt someone else, you got in trouble, and no one else was to blame but yourself. It wasn’t your parent’s fault for the way the treated you as a child, it wasn’t because of drugs, or alcohol, or whatever excuse a lawyer can think of these days. A baby is a human being from the time it is conceived, why doesn’t anyone believe that anymore? This country is turning into a country of “excuses”, no responsibility, it’s ALWAYS someone else’s fault. It’s sooo sad and disgusting..
Uh, that is simply one of the most disgusting thing’s I’ve heard, and the news lately being what it is, that’s hard to say.
She’s “happy”? How about her baby that will nevrr get to be “happy. Andshouldn;t she be tried then for using illegal drugs?
Sickm just sick.
Uh, that is simply one of the most disgusting thing’s I’ve heard, and the news lately being what it is, that’s hard to say.
She’s “happy”? How about her baby that will nevrr get to be “happy. Andshouldn;t she be tried then for using illegal drugs?
Sick just sick.
Couldn’t this wreak havoc on third-trimester abortions? Isn’t that the reason that they’re not to be performed… because the baby could feasibly live outside the mother’s womb?
If a state supreme court said this baby wasn’t really a living person 3 days before birth when Mommy the Druggy took a few hits, then I can easily see this being used by pro-choice activists to further ease abortion limitations.
I strongly suspect that if one were to delve into the defense strategy, one would find yet another example of “criminal as victim” argument. It’s quite popular these days. If the defendant is poor/minority-female/abused as a child/ addicted to harmful substances/… *of course* they are not responsible for their actions. “The system” is. And in the world of the radical left, “the system” translates into anyone or any thing not-poor/not-minority-female/not-abused/not-addicted/… Identifying those who fall into the latter grouping is left as an exercise for the reader.
According to the story, the Penal Code statute passed by the legislature and used in the prosecution defined “person” to be someone already born. If that report is in fact correct, don’t blame the Court, blame the legislature. You can’t convict someone of a crime against a victim who, by definition in the statute, is already born, if that victim is not yet born. Now, there might be other criminal laws, or non-statutory “common law” violations, but if the prosecution did not charge violations of those laws, then there is no basis for a conviction.
Not sure what recourse might remain for the prosecutor’s office in this case, but it seems that they could get a wrongful death or child endangerment suit out of the statement that the mother took drugs the morning she delivered. If I get into a car an hour after taking drugs, have a wreck and kill someone, then I’m likely to be charged with a slew of crimes for driving impaired even if I’m not using drugs at the very second I have the wreck. If mom was impaired after delivery, then she endangered (in fact she contributed to the death) the child by her condition.
Say hello to the new Triple-A farm affiliate for the 9th Circus Court of Appeals. These loonie tunes are a disgrace.
Ken
This is stunning! There doesn’t seem to be a father in the picture during this tragedy. What if the father wanted this woman to bear the child? Would he not have had his rights violated by her behavior? Would he not see her as a murderer? Incidents like this make it tough to maintain Christian thoughts. The Supreme Court of Hawaii must have been sharing the crack pipe with the defendant this time.
The prosecutor should charge her with delivering a controlled substance, but she’d probably onlyget time served anyway.
“Pregnant moms can now harm babies.”
Ordinarily I’d find file this statement somewhere between “histrionic” and “hyperbolic,” but I’ll be damned if it isn’t right on the money. Just yesterday, I saw a woman who must have been at 33 weeks’ gestation run up to a couple with a stroller, reach down, grab what looked like a five-month-old infant, and throw it in front of a speeding cement truck. CRUNCH! Yowza! That was gross! This country is a freakin’ mess.
Think about this — it’s actually a blessing that the newborn died. Better to not exist than to be raised by a meth-head. Who knows what kind of sad life this baby would have suffered? It would be nice if drug addicts would all seek abortions, but they’re not known for their sense of social responsibility.
Sickening.
Just sickening…
Thanks Nolff, for bringing your wise words to the debate. Now let the grown ups talk.
Hopefully, Roberts waits for Alito’s confirmation before the New Hampshire law is decided to be Constitutional or not. It always cracks me up when liberals cry “Unconstitutional.” They must mean things like public education, social security, separation of church and state, and all of those other unconstitutional policies that the left has seen fit to uphold.
“The proscribed conduct must have been committed at a time when Treyson ‘qualified’ as a ‘person,’ defined by the Hawaii Penal Code as ‘a human being who has been born and is alive,’
So then if I leave poison out that an unborn child finds, eats and dies as a result AFTER it is born I am not liable?
The judge neglects certain points of law
AT THE TIME OF DEATH the child was a citizen, it’s death was the result of cummlative poison adminstered by the mother, the death of a citizen by such means is a homicide.
I don’t suppose Hawaii has a fetal homicide law this would throw that right out the window,
“person” to be someone already born. If that report is in fact correct, don’t blame the Court, blame the legislature. You can’t convict someone of a crime against a victim who, by definition in the statute, is already born, if that victim is not yet born
**********************************
At the Time of Death the child had been born, What was the
“cause of death”
Under this precedent, if I give a pregnant woman a slow acting poison which kills her baby after it is born, I cannot be charged with a homicide.
Oh and my defence against a charge of attempted murder of the mother could be, I very carefully administerd a sub-lethal dose for an adult female.
just wondering, what happened before if a pregnant woman harmed her unborn baby by taking any harmful substance, like drinking like crazy, smoking like a chimney, taking drugs (other than taking drugs is already illegal) or taking some prescription you are not supposed to take during pregnancy?
The local news here said that she’s part of an organization now that’s trying to help people get off drugs. That’s commendable but should have been part of her sentence - to serve along with murder.
okay so the fact the woman took drugs led to the death of the unborn child/foetus. So the fact that she has reformed as a person due the court case and subsequent ruling, trauma is missed by you lot.
To call her a murdering slut is that not libel now or slander? She made her mistakes something she will have to live with for the rest of her life. Just say you or your wife, daughter, sister heaven forbid girlfriend as you are all virgins before marriage. Happenes to eat something not good for unborn children, gets ill and due to this illness the unborn child/foetus dies, are they a murdering slut?
I don’t know the case, do any of you know the case that well? That you know the level of education and support this woman had during her pregnancy? Drug addiction is a form of illness, often the person knows that they shouldn’t do it but they are unable to stop. This doesn’t make it right, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be unaccountable. What do you all want as recompense, how should she have been punished. The loss of her child will be a bigger loss to her than that of her liberties. What is the price to imprison a young drug addict woman in a state prison, for her error. It is not murder, it is her fatal mistake, hers to deal with, and no doubt for your God to decide. Believe you me she has more chance of getting to heaven than any of the judges in court on this blog. You without sin cast the first stone.
You are all full of [edited]
This is so horrible! Mothers that have crack babies, get there babies taken away, for being a crack head. This baby “Treyson” dies 2 days after he is born, cause his mother used drugs, she goes free for killing cause they say he wasn’t a human at the time she used it. HORRIBLE!!! I am a mother who had my first child Aug. 12, 2005, he was stillborn. He was the most important thing in the world to me. He was human the minute he was conceived. I would never do anything to harm him. He is just as much of a human when he was born stillborn as he was in my stomach. I got to touch him, kiss him, and love him after he came out, but he was already in heaven! I didn’t have him for two days like this woman, but there is no way in the world, you cannot say he was not human. I have pictures of my baby after he was born. He never moved, never smiled, never looked at us. But he will always be remembered as our son. So if Treyson lived for two days before he passed, was he not human then either??
Using this decision as a “legal” precedent couldn’t Scott Peterson’s appeals lawyer have at least one count of Scott’s conviction thrown out?
What happens to State laws that consider the death of a fetus subsequent to the homocide of a pregnant woman a felony? Seems to me that any such law would have to be declared unconstitutional, based on the “non-personhood” of the second victim.
The Attorney General of Hawaii MUST appeal this travesty. Such an appeal would give the country a definite feel for the Robert’s Courts thinking on the subject of abortion.
So what did you expect the mother to do? Feed Treyson Cyrstal Meth to keep him alive! Or was it the hospitals responsibilty to give the child crystal meth? They do this for heroin addict babies.
O, so I guess, if your baby is kicking inside you and moving all about 3 days before their born, they are not living?? But on the other hand since she was doing drugs, she probably couldn’t feel him move, probably cause he was so high on drugs, he was just mellow and relaxed.. Sad sad story!!! Guess people these days with freedom of speech are taking it to a whole new level, and getting what they want, even though it isn’t based on God’s princples, because it’s freedom of speech. No morals, no values!!! Dear God, Please help us!!! Amen!!!
If this woman asks for forgiveness from God, and turns over this sad affair to His care, and accepts Christ with all her troubled heart, she will be forgiven, and clean, and therefore beyond the reach of the secular authorities. If He forgives, who are the cops to charge her with crimes?
This is true, and God will always forgive those who truely seek, and truely confess with all their heart…yet most of the time he does not take away the consequences, or let things go unpunished. I forgive my child everytime they do something wrong, but theat does not mean I don’t punish them, and teach them a lesson. Do you really think this woman has repented? She just said she was happy with the ruling that stated her child was not human.
Whatsoever you do to the least of My brothers, that you do unto Me
Whatsoever you do to the least of My sisters, that you do unto Me
Whatsoever you do to the least of My children, that you do unto Me
It would be very difficult for me to be in the same room with this woman, let alone the same planet!
Evil has many faces.
I gotta get rid of the argument that she’s a better person now. If that’s our standard, we don’t even need jails any more. We can just ask criminals if they’re sorry.
There’s also issues such as this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1892696,00.html
What does a doctor do when a woman wants an abortion, but the baby is accidently born alive? Should he go ahead and kill it, since it’s really no different than it was an hour before, or would it be better to allow it to Schiavo to death?
The judges did what judges are supposed to do: They followed the law. The problem lies with the law, not with the judges’ ruling.
Guess you folks are not familiar with the Australian professor (at Princeton since 1999) who thinks parents should legally be able to kill “disabled” babies up to 28 days AFTER delivery.
By the way, what I look forward to is laws that make it legal to kill members of the ACLU. All that would be necessary in Hawaii would be to pass a state law that says ACLU members are not human beings. While the Hawaii legislature is at it maybe they could also cover lawyers, used car salesmen, and real estate salesmen as being lower life forms, not human.
Why even give the doomed baby a name. Or she could have called him Treit instead of Treson.