From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Fri Mar 06 1998 - 17:18:04 MST
> Not one person here has come up with a single jurisdiction on
> the planet which recognises an individual's citizenship prior to birth.
> Find just one and you'll have a legal basis to extend rights to a fetus.
Resident non-citizens do have some protected rights in the US.
Even illegal aliens, for example, are entitled by Supreme Court
decree to education and other entitlements of citizens. There
are several jurisdictions that clearly and explicitly grant
rights to fetuses as well: in New York, for example, causing
the death of a 24-week-or-later fetus is prosecutable as murder;
mothers have also been jailed for child abuse for using drugs
while pregnant.
That is not to say that I agree with these laws, but the laws
are there: "rights" and "citizenship" are not equivalent.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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