Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-2017
Publication Information
42 Ethics & Medics, no. 2, Feb. 2017, at 1.
Abstract
That abortion kills someone with a right-to-life has become easier to see since Roe v. Wade. Progress in scientific research and medical practice has made both birth and viability unrealistic criteria for demarcating between human life, which demands moral respect, and merely “potential life” which does not have moral or legal equivalency with maternal interest. The Eighth Circuit recently criticized the use of viability as a litmus test because it “tied a state’s interest in unborn children to developments in obstetrics, not to developments in the unborn.” The near-ubiquity of sonograms has probably done more than intellectual arguments to convince the public that a real baby resides in the uterus by the tenth week of pregnancy. Earlier and earlier prenatal medical interventions on behalf of the unborn patient confirm this impression, and DNA indubitably substantiates that a fertilized embryo is biologically identical to the individual who is born nine months later and who has an undeniable right not to be killed.
Recommended Citation
Gerard V. Bradley,
Feticide and US Law,
42 Ethics & Medics, no. 2, Feb. 2017, at 1..
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1803