A friend of mine sent me the link to a fascinating article yesterday in reaction to my last post about the moral implications of believing that life begins at conception (see here).
This article investigates the legal issues that have arisen in America’s courts by consistently applying the principles of fetal life and individual bodily autonomy.
The piece is titled “The Rights of the Fetus and the Principle of Bodily Autonomy” and is published on the website of the Anastasis Center for Christian Education and Ministry. It is written by David Gill, Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Below is an excerpt:
The fetus is treated very inconsistently by U.S. law today, and not just in abortion situations. For example, the fetus can inherit property. If a pregnant mother dies before or in childbirth, but the fetus survives and is born alive, courts have decided that the child can inherit property along with other living siblings, and the state will appoint guardians for the child if needed.[1]
The fetus can be the victim of personal injuries in assaults in thirty-eight states. For example, in November 2014, in California, Scott Peterson was convicted of the first degree murder of his wife Laci and the second degree murder of their unborn son Connor.[2] In November 2017, in Texas, Devin Patrick Kelley committed a gun massacre at First Baptist Church in Sutherland, Texas, murdering 26 people, including Crystal Holcombe and her unborn child, who was at eight months of gestation and was counted as a person among the victims.[3] The federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 makes a motorist guilty of two homicides in motor vehicle accidents when both a pregnant mother and the fetus in her womb die, even if that woman was on her way to abort her fetus.
The fetus’s life legally overrides its mother’s “religious freedom” interest in refusing blood transfusions if she is a Jehovah’s Witness. In 1964, the New Jersey court, in Fitkin Memorial Hospital v. Anderson, decreed that a pregnant woman who was a Jehovah’s Witness did not have the right to refuse a blood transfusion when doctors believed that the procedure would preserve the life of the fetus she carried. The 1985 In re Jamaica Hospital case in New York’s State Supreme Court decided the same. The New York court recognized the mother’s right to an abortion at that stage in her pregnancy, but maintained that in the circumstance where the mother was in need of a blood transfusion for another emergency reason, the state’s significant interest in protecting a midterm fetus’s life outweighed her religious beliefs against blood transfusions.
Under such laws, fetuses could have their interests defended against poisoning from lead in drinking water, biotoxin exposure, etc. as much as alcohol and other substances. In a helpful law journal article, Robin Trindel highlights numerous examples of courts that have even upheld children’s legal suits against a defendant “for prenatal injuries where the defendant’s negligence occurred prior to the child’s conception.”[4] For example, in Renslow v. Mennonite Hospital (1977), a minor daughter who was also incompetent, represented by her mother, successfully sued a hospital for administering an improper blood transfusion to the mother eight years prior to her getting pregnant. The Rh incompatibility in the mother’s blood caused brain, nervous system, and organ damage to her daughter.[5] A similar case occurred in Bergstreser v. Mitchell (8th Cir. 1978), concerning a child being adversely affected by the doctors who administered a Caesarian section improperly to her mother for her previous child. In Jorgensen v. Meade Johnson Laboratories, Inc. (10th Cir. 1973), deformed twin infants, represented by their parents, successfully sued a birth control drug manufacturer for their condition, which included mental retardation, physical deformity, pain, and suffering.[6]
The Curlender v. Bio-Science Laboratories (1980) case in California surprised many because a child successfully sued for a “wrongful life” cause. She was in constant pain from Tay-Sachs disease. She had been conceived because her parents had relied on the company’s assurances that their genetic tests were accurate and that their child would not have genetic complications. Whereas parents had been able to sue on the grounds of a wrongful birth cause, this was the first time in U.S. legal history where a child won a case on the grounds that she should not exist—that is, of a wrongful life. Observers in many fields registered their alarm at what Curlender meant for the legal jeopardy of science and medical professionals.[7] Taking that one step further, can a child sue the society into which it was born because it was born into poverty?
You can read the entire article and find the footnotes here.
