A married Florida father has been accused of murdering his pregnant mistress after she refused to get an abortion.
Jose Soto-Escalera, 41, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder after authorities found the body of Tania Wise, 23, in a ditch on the side of the road. The St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office confirmed there was trauma found to the back of her head and throat.
Wise was eight months pregnant with Soto-Escalera’s child. An affidavit reported by PEOPLE states Soto-Escalera gave Wise $500 for an abortion, but she refused.
Notice an important detail of the case. Soto-Escalera was accused of not just one count of murder, but two. Florida’s fetal homicide laws protect the preborn through every stage of the pregnancy, except in the case of abortion.
At this point, the logical inconsistency is apparent. Society gives a woman the right to choose, allowing her to terminate the baby. In other cases, if a man kills the child, it is considered murder.
The difference supposedly validating the woman’s case is she consented to the act. However, the reality is consent does not grant or take away personhood. Either the preborn are human, or they are not. Whether a woman wants her child does not alter the status of their child’s humanity.
Apply this pattern of thought to human life outside the womb. Sadly, many children are unwanted after they are born. Does this grant someone justification to kill them? Absolutely not.
There is one thing we can all agree on. What this man is accused of doing is disturbing, and he deserves to face the consequences of murdering two human beings. However, once the humanity of the preborn is stripped by the pro-choice narrative, people must wake up and understand the implications of an ideology that degrades the intrinsic value of life.
If the pro-choice position is correct, meaning the preborn are not human, Soto-Escalera should only be charged with murdering one individual.