The brutal attack in Longmont, Colorado, on an obviously pregnant woman that left her hospitalized and her fetus dead, raises once again a question that American society continues to grapple with: When does a fetus become a baby?
With technology and medicine rapidly advancing, fetuses that would once have died at childbirth are now viable. The line of viability, between a fetus and a being capable of living independently, is no longer distinct.
In some cases, the amount of resources allotted for premature babies is controversial, when it’s uncertain the baby will survive, or, if it does, what its quality of life will be. Yet, whole units in hospitals are mobilized to nurture fetuses born pre-term.
Would anyone deny that an infant hooked up to the machines, whose parents and doctors are doing anything and everything to enable it to survive, is a baby?
Which raises the question: Is the only defining factor the desire of the child’s parents? If the parents desire the child, it’s a baby; if they don’t, it’s a fetus? When we talk about abortion rights, or women’s rights, it is a fetus. When we talk about neo-natal medicine, it is a child. What?
Law cannot be based on personal desire.
When a mentally ill woman deliberately cuts the uterus of a seven-month pregnant women open, is that mere assault or is it murder? Is the victim a 34-week-old fetus or a pre-term baby?
For the mother, who desired this child, who was nearing the moment when she would hold her child in her arms, and who was brutally attacked during an errand in preparation for this child entering the world, is the loss less painful if the baby was a fetus?
The law — and society — cannot have it both ways. Either we classify the deliberate, deadly assault on a fetus as murder, and prosecute accordingly, or we must accept that we will never see the perpetrator brought to justice. We opt for the former.
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
