What's the next argument on the slippery slope?

[LizW]

Alabama is considering passing a law that confers legal personhood on an "unborn child" from conception to birth, regardless of viability. It's being sold under the guise of protecting pregnant women, but obviously the gist of it is the "personhood" thing.

Once a zygote has legal "personhood", what is the next argument that will come up against choice?

Will it be some constitutional argument that a "person" can't be denied life without due process? Or is it that the state has a more compelling interest in protecting the lives of "persons" than it had before?

I understand that the choice debate is about competing rights, and that if the fetus is a "person" then it will be argued that it has a "right to life", but what will the specific legal grounds be?

[CornField]

1. The government only acknowledges fetuses touched by violence as a person

My son was stillborn 3 days prior to his due date. By all current definitions based on viability, he was a person unto himself. Despite all of that, we were not able to write his information on our tax returns because he was considered by our government to never have lived/existed.

Yet, Conner Peterson (Laci & Scott's son) was given the full protection of the law (the same law which refused to acknowledge my son) and Scott was charged with a double murder.

I've been trying for the past few years to get one politician to explain that to me: Why must a pregnant mother be touched by violence before the child she carries be granted personhood? No one has an answer for me, except one republican guy attempted to explain it through "God's Will." (i.e., it was God's will that my son not survive while the others suffered due to human intervention)

I've spent a great deal of time thinking about the whole "personhood" debate. I believe the republicans, in their zeal to appease their religious voting base, haven't given much thought at all to the Pandora's box in front of them. Once personhood is granted to *any* fetus, the ripple effect throughout our current system will be massive. I know I will personally be amending my tax returns to claim each and every child I've lost through the years -- and I know other moms of miscarriage and stillbirth who are angry/frustrated enough to do the same. What will happen to "birth certificates"? The only logical outcome would be "Certificates of Life" which would also pave the way to "Certificates of Potential Life".

What will happen to the woman who attends a party before she is aware she is pregnant and consumes alcohol and/or nicotine? Will the state be able to file charges on behalf of the fetus? What about the woman who stops prenatal vitamins because they make her ill? Or the couple who continues to have sexual relations against doctor's orders? Speaking of doctors, what about those who provide services (such as early amnio) which lead to the unintended demise of the pregnancy?

There are a myriad of such questions which will need to be answered in the courts -- local, state, federal, civil, criminal and more. Yet more proof that republicans don't think before they act & that republicans will do and say anything to keep their voters in lockstep.

[LizW]

2. I had not thought about the point you raise.

I'll have to go back and read the Alabama bill. I don't know if it says "For purposes of this law, a person is defined as...", or if it goes broader than that.

I'm sure the intention is to make the definition apply broadly, but that does bring up the situations you mention. It is quite a Pandora's box.

[iverglas]

3. "for purposes of this law"

That's called a "deeming" provision -- an "x" that is not a "y" is deemed to be a "y" for the purposes of a law, and then made subject to the same rules as a "y".

I'm curious, too, what the purposes are for which a fetus is being deemed to be a "person" in Alabama law.

A dog could be deemed to be a cat in a law about vaccinating cats. A bicycle could be deemed to be a motor vehicle in a law about speed limits.

But if a deeming provision violates someone's rights, it's no different from any other law.

A homicide law that deems a fetus to be a human being (homicide is universally defined as the killing of a human being) does violate rights: the rights of anyone charged with homicide for "killing" a fetus. That person becomes subject to all the penalties associated with homicide -- the harshest penalties that any modern society imposes -- not only for something s/he did not do, but also for doing something that other people (like physicians) do and are not punished at all for.

That's a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed equal protection of the law.

If a fetus were a human being, then it would be a denial of the equal protection of the law for homicide laws not to include "killing" fetuses. Imagine if it were an offence to kill elderly black women, but not middle-aged white guys ...