Prenatal Protection Act and a Tragedy in Michigan

A 16 year boy has been charged with a felony under the Michigan's Prenatal Protection Act for helping end his girlfriend's pregnancy by hitting her in the abdomen with a baseball bat. The girlfriend, who was six months pregnant at the time had her boyfriend hit her repeatedly with a 22-inch souvenir bat over a two-week period in an attempt to terminate the pregnancy. She subsequently gave birth to a stillborn infant. The boy was charged, the girlfriend was not. Pam Sherstad, spokesperson for Right to Life of Michigan, said that the 1999 state law's provision exempting pregnant women from prosecution was added so that the law does not conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Art Caplan, said that the girl should be charged with "planning, plotting or conspiring to murder," but he added that "it's tough to do because the law takes a different view of developing potential life than it does of actual life. If the boy was charged with murder, she probably would be facing charges, too." -- Linda Glenn

Pennsylvania on State Stem Cell Money

"Us too." But perhaps money isn't enough in Pennsylvania, where destruction of an embryo seems to be a class 3 felony. Efforts to change that law (in my [Glenn's] state-based bioethics class at Penn, in cooperation with Pennsylvania State Senator Alison Schwartz) fell flat on their face; she was even threatened with retribution.

California DNA Law Worrisome Threat to Privacy

In a move that has privacy advocates worried, California voters approved proposition 69, an aggressive DNA-collection program. The new law, officially called the DNA Fingerprint, Unsolved Crime and Innocence Protection Act, will collect data from anyone convicted of, or arrested for a felony. It is expected to add the genetic data of about a million people to California's databank over the five years, making it the largest state-run DNA databank in the country.