🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <65676@hydra.gatech.EDU> gt0418c@prism.gatech.EDU (Shane Wm. McWhorter) writes:
>
>You see? BORN of US parents, BIRTH certificate. Does this mean
>a fetus is not legally a US Citizen until birth?
>
>Then the US Constitution does not guarantee the Life, Liberty, and
>Pursuit of Happiness to a fetus, legally speaking?

I don't know if the above is exactly "logical", from a legal point
of view or not, but the act of killing a living fetus, even when the 
woman carrying it is only injured, renders the attacker liable to 
a charge of murder in every state I ever lived in.  I'm told that
this definition of murder has been around for thousands of years. 
Whether it is viewed this way by US federal or state law, I have no
idea.
 
This perspective allows the following rather bizarre legal scenario,
though. A pregnant woman is on her way to a clinic to have an abortion 
performed.  She is suddenly attacked by someone and punched very hard
in the stomach, and her unborn child is killed.  Now she has the choice
choice either to thank the man for doing what she was planning to do 
(albeit in a more painful way, coupled with assault), or she can have 
him charged with murder, depending on her "state of mind".

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^  Dr. J(effrey Neil Burch)                 jb118@prism.gatech.edu    ^
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