ND Measure Says Fertilized Egg Has Human Rights:
A measure approved by the North Dakota House gives a fertilized human egg the legal rights of a human being, a step that would essentially ban abortion in the state.
The bill is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that extended abortion rights nationwide, supporters of the legislation said.
Representatives voted 51-41 to approve the measure Tuesday. It now moves to the North Dakota Senate for its review.
The bill declares that “any organism with the genome of homo sapiens” is a person protected by rights granted by the North Dakota Constitution and state laws.
The measure’s sponsor, Rep. Dan Ruby, R-Minot, said the legislation did not automatically ban abortion. Ruby has introduced bills in previous sessions of the Legislature to prohibit abortion in North Dakota.
“This language is not as aggressive as the direct ban legislation that I’ve proposed in the past,” Ruby said during House floor debate on Tuesday. “This is very simply defining when life begins, and giving that life some protections under our Constitution — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
HT: Mary J.
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Maybe I’m stupid (It’s always a possibility with me), but it doesn’t seem to me that this necessarily would legally define an embryo as a human being.
Is an embryo, in legalese, an organism? It seems like this legislation leaves a lot of wiggling room for those who claim that something that cannot live independently is not an organism.
I grant that the argument that an embryo is not an organism is wrong. What I’m not sure about is if this law would do anything at all.
@3 I think its more of a step in the right direction than a cure-all.
It’s one thing to legally restrict abortion; it’s quite another, in my view, to base such restrictions on the premise that an embryo has legal rights. Would the embryo be entitled to legal representation, e.g., a guardian ad litem, to prevent the mother from going out of state for an abortion? Or what if the mother behaved while pregnant in a way that could harm the embryo? By smoking? What if the rights of the mother and the embryo conflict, as if cases where to continue the preganancy could lead to irreparable harm to either one? Would one sue the other?
This may sound far fetched, but these are valid questions when one has legal rights. It reminds me of the pre-Civil War period when the legal rights of slaves were in flux. In some places they were mere property; elsewhere they could sue for their freedom. The 13th and 14th Amendments helped clear things up. Perhaps what’s needed in a constitutional amendment that bans abortion, rather than a challenge to Supreme Court rulings based on embryonic rights.
Jon (@6), an easy way to answer your questions is to ask how you’d answer them if they involved a newborn (who is, after all, only a few months older than an embryo).
Would a newborn be entitles to legal representation to prevent the mother from euthanizing it? What if the mother behaved in a way that could harm the newborn? What if the rights of the mother and the newborn conflict?
These questions may not have completely simple answers (though I don’t find them that tricky to ponder), but they’re definitely answerable. And just as I don’t consider the newborn questions to be ridiculous at all, nor do I for the embryo. How about you?
It seems to me a big step in the right direction. Why do we seek to criticize it and tear it apart? Finally, a state who is saying the Supreme Court does not have the final say in our country! I wish the federal legislative and executive branches would do some of that, and get the court to uphold the law and the constitution rather than make laws.
tODD, I’d answer yes to the questions if a newborn was at issue. The newborn is a completely separate person from the mother. But the embryo? I think it raises all kinds of practical questions…what about a miscarriage? Would that have to be investigated with the same intensity that is used to investigate the deaths of infants or toddlers? What I mean is, some kind of distinction must be maintained between an embryo of, say, 1 months’ gestation, and a human being that exists outside a womb.
Go North Dakota! Praise God.
Keep in mind that even a constitutional amendment requires both Congressional and state enforcement to have any impact. Expecting change at a national legislative level is expecting much – perhaps too much. I think of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) in which Chief Justice Roger B. Taney overturned almost 40 years of compromise over the slavery issue with one blow. The 14th and 15th amendments took over 90 years to be enforced by the states while the Supreme Court took a stance that relegated blacks to second class citizens (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, etc.). And constitutional amendments can always be overturned as in the case of Prohibition. Perhaps it is best to say that change begins in human hearts, with families and communities. North Dakota is modeling what is an imperfect plan today which is certainly better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
OH no i steped on a skin cell dont arrest me
i meant a human skin cell ( “any organism with the genome of homo sapiens”)