His wife, who has filed for divorce, told the court the jail sentence was not long enough.

A Texas man who drugged his wife’s drinks in an attempt to induce an abortion was sentenced to 180 days in jail and 10 years on probation.

Mason Herring, a 39-year-old Houston attorney, pleaded guilty Wednesday to injury to a child and assault of a pregnant person. He had initially been charged with felony assault to induce abortion.

Catherine Herring, who has filed for divorce, told the court the jail sentence was not long enough. She said their 1-year-old daughter, their third child, was born about 10 weeks premature, has developmental delays and attends therapy eight times a week.

  • Stovetop@lemmy.world
    101·
    11 months ago

    If the fetus was never born, this argument might have merit, but it became a person and there were health consequences.

    • Tremble
      35·
      11 months ago

      It was a fetus when the crime happened. If I kick someone in the balls and it causes their sperm to be deformed and hurts a baby ten years later I am not guilty of hurting babies born later.

      • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
        31·
        11 months ago

        If you shoot someone while robbing them and they live, that’s aggravated robbery in Texas.

        If they die as a result of those injuries 10 years later, the crime is then upgraded to murder (possibly even capital murder) in Texas.

        • Tremble
          33·
          11 months ago

          That’s very interesting and since posting this I’ve been thinking about it, you could probably sue someone in civil court for this kind of thing.

          But a fetus is not a human.

          I’m not a lawyer or a judge, but a fetus is not a human.

          • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
            3·
            11 months ago

            Ok, I won’t disagree on your definitions. But the charge of “Injury to a Child” is still appropriate here. A child was eventually injured as a result of an assault.

            • Tremble
              23·
              11 months ago

              Now that would be a matter of the law. I don’t know if you can be accused of assaulting someone before they were a human. At the time of the crime, no child was injured.

              I think the pregnant person was assaulted and the penalty was possibly way to low, but saying that a child was injured is incorrect. I don’t have the answer, but it seems like the mother should be compensated somehow for her assault, enough even to possibly help with the eventual child that was born. But a fetus is not a human is my main point.

              I’m sure there is a moral solution to this, but claiming that fetus’ are humans is not that solution.

              Edit: I would even argue we could penalize people for assaulting a fetus if that that is what we wanted to do. But calling a fetus a child is just plain incorrect.

              Edit: I take that back. Assaulting a fetus is not a thing. Full stop. Assaulting a pregnant person is.

              • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
                2·
                11 months ago

                I do have the answer. In Texas, injuring a pregnant woman that results in injury to the child that is eventually born is called “Injury to a Child”.