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"Abortion Man" Video Raises Questions about Coerced Abortion and Fetal Personhood

Video "an indictment against drive-by fathers" says pro-life author

By Michael Baggot

April 25, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Comedian Damon Wayans's controversial new YouTube video featuring a camp superhero called "Abortion Man" violently "rescuing" a woman from pregnancy has focused public attention upon male mistreatment of women and the personhood of the unborn child.

Wayans's video depicts "Abortion Man" "aiding" a women's father by punching his impregnated wife's abdomen until the injured child pops out of her womb into the air and falls several feet away.

While some think Wayans's video is crude and offensive, others suspect it could be a satiric attack on abortion.

"Abortion Man is an indictment against drive-by fathers.  It hyperbolizes coerced abortions," wrote pro-life author Jill Stanek after receiving reader responses to her previous WorldNetDaily.com coverage of the video.

"I mean honestly, imagine someone who favors abortion watching that sketch.  It makes THEM look like vermin.  It makes me, a pro-lifer, feel good because I would never do that in the name of 'choice' or 'freedom,' responded one reader to Stanek's initial column.

No matter what Wayans's intent in making the video was, the "Abortion Man" clip has raised on-going moral and legal questions about assault against pregnant women.

Recent highly publicized instances of attacks against mothers, such as the Laci Peterson case, sparked federal and state legislation seeking to acknowledge that two victims are involved in such assaults.

Advocates of the unborn child's personhood were enthused when President George W. Bush signed into law the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA) on April 1, 2004. 

"Any time an expectant mother is a victim of violence, two lives are in the balance, each deserving protection, and each deserving justice.  If the crime is murder and the unborn child's life ends, justice demands a full accounting under the law," said Bush before signing UVVA into law.

Liberal groups, such as the Democratic National Committee, the National Organization of Women, and the American Civil Liberties Union, object to the UVVA and other similar legislation on the groups that it affords the fetus personhood status, and hence, legal protection.

Because the UVVA only addresses federal and military crimes, each state is left to determine how it will punish most acts of violence against mothers.

Thirty-six states currently have laws that recognize the killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some instances.

Twenty-six of the states have laws that protect the child during the whole period of pre-natal development, while the laws of the other ten states protect the unborn child during only part of his pre-natal development.

Read previous related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Pregnant U.S. Marine Found Slain: Child Has no Legal Status Under NC Law
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jan/08011605.html

Scott Peterson Trial and Sentence Gave Massive Exposure to Humanity of Unborn Child
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/dec/041214a.html

Learn more about Unborn Victims of Violence legislation:
http://www.nrlc.org/unborn_victims/index.html

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