If Abortion = Murder, then is Miscarriage = Involuntary Manslaughter? (No)

For a few years now, I've heard people suggest that if abortion was made illegal that pro-lifers would have to treat women who had miscarriages as if they committed murder.  This never made any sense and it disrespected pro-lifers and women who had miscarriages.

Murder requires malice/intent. Miscarriage does not include that, so it seemed very easy to dismiss. I know more couples who faced miscarriages than I wish I knew since it's so traumatic. I'm always hopeful that more people will learn about NaProTechnology so fewer couples go through a miscarriage, among the many other health benefits it offers.

But someone recently compared miscarriage to involuntary manslaughter, and I was ready to dismiss it just as easily, assuming it was roughly the same concern. Sure, it had the word "involuntary" out front, but it still seemed like the argument would be similar. I struggled a bit at first. But after thinking about it more, I eventually figured out what I really needed to say. I hope I conveyed it in a way that came across well.

The key to understanding where to go with the discussion was in the definition of manslaughter. Involuntary manslaughter doesn't apply to every situation where someone dies as a result of an unintentional action of another person. Some people are charged with involuntary manslaughter and are acquitted--found not guilty. There are two categories of involuntary manslaughter.

There is "unlawful-act manslaughter." This is the type that requires the perpetrator to be committing another crime. A good example of this is when someone is speeding through a red light and collides with another vehicle and someone dies. It wasn't the intention of the person who ran the light to kill anyone. But they broke other laws that were specifically created to protect lives from being lost and property from being damaged.

The other category is "criminally negligent manslaughter." This form involves the taking of an unreasonable and high degree of risk, often in situations that require some skill. If you were the operator of a wrecking ball on a site requiring demolition, and you swung the ball back into a crowd of people who were walking by the site, this could be an example of this type of manslaughter. You're expected to operate such dangerous equipment responsibly and with enough space sectioned off around it to prevent such loss of life.

I didn't get into those details with the person. Without looking up the definition in advance, I was focused on the unlawful-act categorization. It was clear to me that miscarriage isn't typically the result of someone breaking some other laws. It's also not typically the result of someone taking unreasonable risks in a situation involving skill. Being new to this argument, I didn't press them on it and they didn't say anything more about the manslaughter comparison after I made my better argument. The better argument was much shorter than the longer argument I originally posed, which was getting me nowhere.

I avoided the more confrontational approach. After all, I could have asked what other crime he thinks women are committing that caused the miscarriages or what unreasonable risks they took. If someone was being particularly rude and confrontational, maybe I would have considered it. But I think my point was made without using tactics that are obviously aiming to silence them. The assertion they made uses this tactic. No one wants to blame women for doing something wrong that they didn't do. This is why people might want to tie their opponents to logic [that is faulty] to make it appear that they think someone who has a miscarriage is guilty of manslaughter. It would have been easy to sling it right back and make them come up with the necessary crimes it would take to make their assertion true. Perhaps that might work better in a televised debate, but we want to really reach the people we talk to. In the same way we recognize their tactics, they will recognize it when it comes back at them.

I wish I hadn't wasted words with the stuff I said before it all clicked in my head and I had a concise solution. But it seemed like a case where simply stating the following:

In cases of manslaughter, something else wrong is happening. Someone could run a red light or be speeding excessively. They don't intend to kill someone, but they hit someone and someone dies. With miscarriage, there is none of that. That's why miscarriage would not be even involuntary manslaughter, and thus why it has never been treated as such, even when abortion was illegal.

That was enough to bring the unreasonable comparison to an end in a respectful way, especially since it was on Facebook with a mostly unfriendly audience.