My goodness me, we’re confused on the issue of life. Ariel Castro, it seems, could be executed for his crimes. Not for rape or kidnapping — the nonsense of Coker v. Georgia took care of that — but for “aggravated murder.” Per USA Today, the prosecution’s report,

alleges that Castro impregnated Knight five times, forced her to starve for weeks at a time and punched her in the stomach until she miscarried. Castro, the report said, also forced Knight to deliver Berry’s baby in a plastic kiddie pool and threatened to murder Knight if the newborn died.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Ohio law treats unborn children as potential murderees:

Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2903.01 et seq defines aggravated murder, murder, voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, negligent homicide, aggravated vehicular homicide, aggravated vehicular assault, felonious assault, aggravated assault, assault and negligent assault. The law applies to a person, which includes an “unborn member of the species Homo sapiens, who is or was carried in the womb of another.

Castro could thus be executed for the “murder” of these unborn children.

Yet abortion is legal in Ohio, as everywhere else in the United States. This means that if you kill an unborn child in Ohio with the mother’s permission, it’s okay; if you do it without her permission, it’s murder. The unborn child, therefore, is only a life if the mother says it is a life. That makes no logical sense at all. It is the logic of slavery, not of individual liberty. Who will defend it?