Feticide?

In this article, the term "feticide" is used to refer to the killing of a fetus, as occurs during abortion or miscarriage. I greatly dislike this term, for it seems to equate "feticide" with words like "genocide" or "homocide," which are inarguably crimes more heinous than the taking of a life of something parasitic and incapable of conscious thought.

This is dangerous. The article itself is about the House of Virginia passing a law that makes "feticide" a class 4 felony. In Virginia, a class 4 felony means 2-10 years of imprisonment and up to $100,000 in fines. Also a class 4 felony in Virginia: rape/sexual assault and statutory rape, so you get the idea to the sort of moral standards its being equated to -- funny that it's with laws that supposedly exist to protect women. Basically, this means that in the eyes of the Virginia law, a woman trying to terminate a pregnancy gets the same punishment as a child molester. Sound a little crazy to you?

This is not to mention the fact that, according to the famous Roe vs. Wade, "feticide" is a constitutional right. Never has the constitution been interpreted by the US Supreme Court to say rape was a constitutional right, but, hey, no one really knows what the fore fathers were thinking when they wrote it!