Miscarriage vs. Abortion

Ever since the verdict in the Casey Anthony trial came down, I've been in such shock that until now, I couldn't put it into words. Now I feel that need upon me.

There are many, MANY things to talk about in that case re: this one, but for now the first and most important is the difference between how they fell apart.

In medical terms, a miscarriage refers to when a fetus dies inside the mother's womb for whatever reason. The mother and even those around her may try to do everything right, but something causes it not to be.

An abortion is when the decision is consciously made to destroy the fetus inside the womb so the baby can never be born.

That's the distinction here as well. With Casey Anthony, the prosecution did everything they could. They presented a solid circumstantial case that, in the era before shows like CSI and the general overreliance on technology that I often warn about, would have sent her to prison. But she still got away with it. People will tell you the different reasons, but she walked because of the poor quality of jury intelligence that we see so much of today.

But it's different in the JB case. That case was destroyed before it was ever made by politics and cowardice. Everyone forgot about a little girl and was more concerned with their egos, their careers, their public images, and their personal and political agendas.

And now the difference is undeniable!

As usual Dave, you are right. There was one thing said during this trial that really bothered me. It was when Jeff Ashton said: Why would anyone want to make an accident look like a murder? I knew exactly why someone would. This was the first time I really began to worry about the verdict!

joeskidbeck said:

As usual Dave, you are right. There was one thing said during this trial that really bothered me. It was when Jeff Ashton said: Why would anyone want to make an accident look like a murder? I knew exactly why someone would. This was the first time I really began to worry about the verdict!

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Me, too, Beck! When he said that, I was practically yelling at the TV!

SuperDave said:

Ever since the verdict in the Casey Anthony trial came down, I've been in such shock that until now, I couldn't put it into words. Now I feel that need upon me.

There are many, MANY things to talk about in that case re: this one, but for now the first and most important is the difference between how they fell apart.

In medical terms, a miscarriage refers to when a fetus dies inside the mother's womb for whatever reason. The mother and even those around her may try to do everything right, but something causes it not to be.

An abortion is when the decision is consciously made to destroy the fetus inside the womb so the baby can never be born.

That's the distinction here as well. With Casey Anthony, the prosecution did everything they could. They presented a solid circumstantial case that, in the era before shows like CSI and the general overreliance on technology that I often warn about, would have sent her to prison. But she still got away with it. People will tell you the different reasons, but she walked because of the poor quality of jury intelligence that we see so much of today.

But it's different in the JB case. That case was destroyed before it was ever made by politics and cowardice. Everyone forgot about a little girl and was more concerned with their egos, their careers, their public images, and their personal and political agendas.

And now the difference is undeniable!

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And let me even say that I agree with you wholeheartedly on everything you say about Casey. But I don't believe either case was an accident made look like a murder. They were both murders. I am commenting not to argue but to give you Kudos about the Anthony debacle.

SuperDave said:

In medical terms, a miscarriage refers to when a fetus dies inside the mother's womb for whatever reason. The mother and even those around her may try to do everything right, but something causes it not to be.

An abortion is when the decision is consciously made to destroy the fetus inside the womb so the baby can never be born.

And now the difference is undeniable!

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Is that how you personally see the definitions? Because abortion and miscarriage before the 20th week of pregnancy are interchangeable in usage. Medical professionals can use either term. Consciously having an abortion has no affect on whether you term it an abortion or a miscarriage. I have heard women refer to spontaneous or natural abortions as simply an abortion, and they wanted the child.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002458/

SuperDave said:

Me, too, Beck! When he said that, I was practically yelling at the TV!

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I also thought of JBR's case when he made that statement. However, Jose Baez claimed that Caylee drowned in the pool, which is a lot different than bashing your kid in the head with a flashlight/other object. Patsy had a much bigger motive to cover up the accident than Casey did.

MargotKidder said:

Is that how you personally see the definitions? Because abortion and miscarriage before the 20th week of pregnancy are interchangeable in usage. Medical professionals can use either term. Consciously having an abortion has no affect on whether you term it an abortion or a miscarriage. I have heard women refer to spontaneous or natural abortions as simply an abortion, and they wanted the child.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002458/

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I wasn't speaking literally, MargotKidder. :truce:

Roy23 said:

And let me even say that I agree with you wholeheartedly on everything you say about Casey. But I don't believe either case was an accident made look like a murder. They were both murders. I am commenting not to argue but to give you Kudos about the Anthony debacle.

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Thanks, I guess. Far be it from me to say I told you so, pilgrim.

eileenhawkeye said:

I also thought of JBR's case when he made that statement. However, Jose Baez claimed that Caylee drowned in the pool, which is a lot different than bashing your kid in the head with a flashlight/other object. Patsy had a much bigger motive to cover up the accident than Casey did.

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True enough, but the spirit is the same.

Why would someone want to make an accident look like murder? I don't get it. Thank you for explaining!

ETA: unless it is to frame someone?

ICA, was judged by a jurory of her peers we should all be afraid for the future if this is the type of people we are raising and becoming ourselves. Spoiled, over indulged, narcissistic people. So the next time you find it hard to tell your child no or hold them accountable for the wrongs that they have done, you just may be raising a Casey.

One more thing, next time you receive a jury summons do the right thing and serve..... Its like voting, if you dont vote, than dont complain about what you get for the next four years. Both are your duties as citizens of this country.

SuperDave said:

That's the distinction here as well. With Casey Anthony, the prosecution did everything they could. They presented a solid circumstantial case that, in the era before shows like CSI and the general overreliance on technology that I often warn about, would have sent her to prison. But she still got away with it. People will tell you the different reasons, but she walked because of the poor quality of jury intelligence that we see so much of today.

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I don't know that I agree with you about the jury's "low quality of intelligence".

First, if I take your statement very literally, then I'd ask to see their IQ scores. We can't really say they're dummies until we've seen their scores.

Second, as I understood one juror's comment, they questioned the COD, and that would be crucial to deciding whether or not Casey Anthony killed, or just tried to hide a dead body.

IMO, Casey probably did it. But I can see why there was doubt. To me, this is the link between the two cases. Doubt.

Working on probabilities, most of us lean heavily to RDI. But there is reasonable doubt in the JBR case - 3 spots of DNA, no history of abuse, no discernible motive.

When I post about the JBR case, I'm working with what I consider to be probable. But that is not the court room standard. Beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard. I don't think the Jury's doubt was unreasonable.

Agatha_C said:

One more thing, next time you receive a jury summons do the right thing and serve..... Its like voting, if you dont vote, than dont complain about what you get for the next four years. Both are your duties as citizens of this country.

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I sometimes wonder why we make the duty so onerous. I understand the reasoning for sequestration, but being sequestered for over a month is like being in prison - when your only crime is being selected for jury duty.

I think people should be able to take a few days of being sequestered and buck and and call it their duty. IMO a month of more of being sequestered is abuse.

Let's also talk of the pay for doing one's duty. Me, I'm lucky, my employer pays my regular salary while I'm on jury duty. All I have to do is give my employer my jury duty check. More than a fair trade, I'd say.

Not everyone is so lucky. Many employers do not pay people when they serve on jury duty. Jury pay is a joke. Pay for a day is less than most people make in an hour. This too, amounts to abuse if serving for an extended time.

I wonder if this jury abuse played a part in the jury's decision. Maybe not consciously. If I'd been on that jury, I'd have been thinking - Hey, you lock me up and keep me isolated from the outside world for several weeks and you not only don't have COD, you knew going in that you didn't have COD.

Chrishope said:

I sometimes wonder why we make the duty so onerous. I understand the reasoning for sequestration, but being sequestered for over a month is like being in prison - when your only crime is being selected for jury duty.

I think people should be able to take a few days of being sequestered and buck and and call it their duty. IMO a month of more of being sequestered is abuse.

Let's also talk of the pay for doing one's duty. Me, I'm lucky, my employer pays my regular salary while I'm on jury duty. All I have to do is give my employer my jury duty check. More than a fair trade, I'd say.

Not everyone is so lucky. Many employers do not pay people when they serve on jury duty. Jury pay is a joke. Pay for a day is less than most people make in an hour. This too, amounts to abuse if serving for an extended time.

I wonder if this jury abuse played a part in the jury's decision. Maybe not consciously. If I'd been on that jury, I'd have been thinking - Hey, you lock me up and keep me isolated from the outside world for several weeks and you not only don't have COD, you knew going in that you didn't have COD.

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I understand where you are coming from and I respect your point of view. We have military that are paid peanuts and asked to give far more. So I feel its little to ask. As for the pay, we as citizens need to make the move for change in our system, a system we fail as much as it fails us.

Agatha_C said:

I understand where you are coming from and I respect your point of view. We have military that are paid peanuts and asked to give far more. So I feel its little to ask. As for the pay, we as citizens need to make the move for change in our system, a system we fail as much as it fails us.

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The military is all volunteer. Has been since Vietnam. They know what they'll be asked to do, and they know the pay rates going in. (I served 14 years myself)

Military pay might be peanuts relative to the sacrifice we ask, but jury pay is also peanuts. We don't ask jurors to die for their country, but in a case like this we ask them to be sequestered for a month or more, loosing pay, deprived of family and friends.

The last time I served I only had to go in for half a day. I was paid (a few weeks later) the magnificent sum of $8 and change. Had I served a whole day, I still would not have received the equivalent of one hour of pay from my job. I was not even paid federal minimum wage.

I think we can ask citizens to bear this burden for a few days. Several weeks of it is abuse.

Chrishope said:

The military is all volunteer. Has been since Vietnam. They know what they'll be asked to do, and they know the pay rates going in. (I served 14 years myself)

Military pay might be peanuts relative to the sacrifice we ask, but jury pay is also peanuts. We don't ask jurors to die for their country, but in a case like this we ask them to be sequestered for a month or more, loosing pay, deprived of family and friends.

The last time I served I only had to go in for half a day. I was paid (a few weeks later) the magnificent sum of $8 and change. Had I served a whole day, I still would not have received the equivalent of one hour of pay from my job. I was not even paid federal minimum wage.

I think we can ask citizens to bear this burden for a few days. Several weeks of it is abuse.

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This would be why they ask about hardship. If it Honestly creates hardship then one should be excused but not not everyone would suffer hardship. I did not mean to imply that one should sacrifice their livelihood, but, if they can afford it its their duty. How do you keep the process fair without sequestration? What would be fair to you if you were on trial for something that you didnt do and yet everyone thought that you did (not my feelings about ICA? You wouldnt be worried about jury contamination?

I think the pay should be fair and the time should be sucked up. This is what I mean by over indulged, we want freedom, liberty and rights, we just dont want to be put out for it.

By the way, thank you for your time given to the service of this country. I have mad respect for that. I mean if you can give all those years, why cant I or other Americans give 8 weeks or more if we are needed? JMHO!

eileenhawkeye said:

I also thought of JBR's case when he made that statement. However, Jose Baez claimed that Caylee drowned in the pool, which is a lot different than bashing your kid in the head with a flashlight/other object. Patsy had a much bigger motive to cover up the accident than Casey did.

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I would say the Ramseys (if you are an RDI) made a 2nd degree murder (rather than an accident, IMO) look like a 1st degree murder, and it worked out great for them. It shouldn't have, but it did. It was really a good idea. Who knew LE would further bungle it?

Making an accident look like a murder is... well, stupid and, to me, unbelievable. 12 people bought it, though.

I disagree with the jury intelligence comments. They were smarter than most juries I've read about and seen. The prosecution failed to show that Caylee was murdered. The fact that her body was hidden and the accident not reported is not enough reason to believe murder in this case.

This is when Casey's own bad actions actually helped her. Since Casey couldn't accept responsibility for stubbing her toe let alone an accident it was easy to believe she would with or without help cover up her daughters death. This woman has a history of not accepting any responsibility for her actions or lack of action. I'm sure she told her parents that when she got pregnant she was using birth control of some form and that it failed. I'm certain she covered up the fact she was no longer employed at Universal because she was fired for good reasons. Reasons she can't take responsibility for.

Before this case I believed Alex Hunter to be a total farce as a DA. I now have a different view of him and am grateful he didn't pursue a charge against anyone in the R family that he couldn't back up with some irrefutable evidence. Baez isn't nearly as skilled an attorney as the team the R's assembled. With people like Lou Smit willing to testify for the R's theory of an intruder I think everyone would have been as shocked as they are about the Casey Anthony trial when Patsy walked free.

Would things have been different had the police not arrested Casey as quickly as they did? Would she have eventually cracked and said something very damming that could have allowed the jury to believe the prosecution?

George buying a gun and bringing it to his home while his daughter is on house arrest sure looks like he might have been planning a mass murder suicide or that he wanted to throw his daughter under the bus. It does not look like what he claims he bought it for. Being a former law enforcement person he was certain to have known what consequences there would have been to him and to a legal team prosecuting, when he got a confession at gunpoint. If Caylee had been alive and kidnapped and he managed to find her and get her back he would have messed up the case a prosecutor would have pursuing kidnapping charges as he violated their rights at gunpoint. Much of the evidence proving kidnapping would not be allowed in a trial to be used to prosecute a kidnapper due to his behavior.


This is not a case of bad jurors. Not enough evidence existed to prove murder. I have never heard of a mother who wanted to kill her child who was worried about how much pain or anxiety the killing would cause the child. I wasn't able to believe a woman who would kill her child would knock her out with chloroform then smother her to prevent her from becoming scared during the smothering. The two acts are polar opposites.

I do believe Casey is responsible for Caylee's death and had they included a simple manslaughter charge the jury would have IMO convicted her of that.

Casey inherited her lying tendencies from her mother. She was shown in a photo with a very obviously almost-8-month pregnant Casey at a family function and denied her daughter was pregnant. She was proven to be at work when she claimed to have been researching chloroform on her HOME computer. And the dad is hiding something as well. His granddaughter's "accidental" drowning? No. But both parents know exactly what happened to Caylee. Good call, waiting till she was to decomposed to be able to tell if she really drowned. They didn't need an incompetent coroner like the Rs did. They just had to wait long enough for her to be found.
Just like the Rs. The know exactly what happened to JB.
The Anthony family doesn't deserve to have a sweet little angel like Caylee. So that was taken care of, apparently, by the angels who are caring for her now. They got her 'outta there.

And BTW, as far as the thread topic- a miscarriage is referred to medically as a spontaneous abortion, isn't it?

SuperDave said:

Ever since the verdict in the Casey Anthony trial came down, I've been in such shock that until now, I couldn't put it into words. Now I feel that need upon me.

There are many, MANY things to talk about in that case re: this one, but for now the first and most important is the difference between how they fell apart.

In medical terms, a miscarriage refers to when a fetus dies inside the mother's womb for whatever reason. The mother and even those around her may try to do everything right, but something causes it not to be.

An abortion is when the decision is consciously made to destroy the fetus inside the womb so the baby can never be born.

That's the distinction here as well. With Casey Anthony, the prosecution did everything they could. They presented a solid circumstantial case that, in the era before shows like CSI and the general overreliance on technology that I often warn about, would have sent her to prison. But she still got away with it. People will tell you the different reasons, but she walked because of the poor quality of jury intelligence that we see so much of today.

But it's different in the JB case. That case was destroyed before it was ever made by politics and cowardice. Everyone forgot about a little girl and was more concerned with their egos, their careers, their public images, and their personal and political agendas.

And now the difference is undeniable!

Click to expand...

SuperDave,
I agree with much of what you say. I only followed this case sporadically, network news, paper media etc. Your very telling description: They presented a solid circumstantial case sums up the prosecution error in their strategy. They tossed far too much unsubstantiated evidence at the jury, who rather than being dumb, were confused with what was fact and what was fiction.

IMO it was the defense attorney who by adopting and promoting a strategy to counter the circumstantial case e.g. there is another less sinister explanation that merits the juries consideration on probable doubt grounds, saw clearly what might win the day, and it did!

For me its not very dissimilar from Lou Smit popping up with his window climbing stories and claims about a psychopathic killer with a penchant for kinky sex. The media bought it, the public bought it, they sold documentaries via it. So in the court of public opinion many people think an intruder killed JonBenet.

Slightly more interesting over here in the UK is the potential implosion and collapse of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, Fox Media to you guys. Some of the details explain very nicely the corrupt nexus between the Politicians, Media, and Police. All slapping each others back, swapping brown envelopes, and doing each other corporate favours. Naturally what is aired in public is window dressing, all the information is being drip fed by News Corp as they communicate information about alleged felonies to the authorities, then their spin doctors are on standby for media interviews and rebuttal etc.

Why is such systemic corruption being allowed to play as the proverbial media event, and News Of The World being closed down? One corporate lawyer I spoke to suggested it was probably the nuclear option or Plan C.

Something so serious and toxic occurred that a corporate shutdown was the only option, apart from burying any evidence, NOTW can be resuscitated at a later date, as a newly incorporated entity, say in Delaware, no questions asked!


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