(Hot Air)
This may not sound like it’s a case about abortion but it is. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overruled a lower court which had determined that a woman could be held liable for child abuse because she used drugs during her pregnancy and gave birth to a baby who spent two weeks detoxing in a hospital. The reasoning here is simple: Prior to birth a fetus isn’t a person thus the law can’t protect them from harm. From the Associated Press:
The Supreme Court’s main opinion said the law’s definition of a child does not include fetuses or unborn children, and victims of perpetrators must be children under the Child Protective Services Law.
“The fact that the actor, at a later date, becomes a person who meets one of the statutorily-defined categories of ‘perpetrator’ does not bring her earlier actions — even if committed within two years of the child’s bodily injury — under the CPSL,” wrote Justice Christine Donohue.
Two judges dissented, arguing that this case should rest not on whether the fetus was a person at the time of the abuse (i.e. when mom was using drugs) but whether it was a person at the time the injury took place (when the baby spent two weeks in a hospital detoxing). Read more
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