The Rights of "Unborn Children" and the Value of Pregnant Women

Abstract

A quarter century after International Year of Child, we now seem to be in era of Child. Partly this because of medical advances: highly refined imaging techniques have made fetus more visually accessible to parents. In good measure, however, new era a product of political shifts. In 2004, President Bush signed into law Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which makes it a separate federal offense to bring about death or bodily injury of a in utero while committing certain crimes, and recognizes everything from a zygote to a fetus as an independent victim with legal rights distinct from woman who has been harmed. In 2002, Department of Health and Human Services adopted new regulations expanding definition of child in State Children's Health Insurance Program so that a State may elect to make individuals in period between conception and birth eligible for coverage. Finally, Senator Brownback and thirty-one cosponsors have proposed Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, a scientifically dubious piece of legislation that would require physicians performing exceedingly rare abortions after twenty weeks to inform pregnant women of the option of choosing to have anesthesia or other pain-reducing drug or drugs administered directly to pain-capable unborn child. The legislative focus on unborn aimed at women who choose abortion, but it may also have adverse consequences for women who choose not to have an abortion, and it challenges a central tenet of human rights--namely, that no person can be required to submit to state enforced surgery for benefit of another. The historical context of rights legislation should make most fervent proponents of rights--pregnant women--wary. Often, in past, expansions of rights have been purchased through diminution of pregnant women's rights. The to from environmental toxins cost pregnant women right to good jobs: for nearly ten years before U.S. Supreme Court ruled against such polices in 1991, companies used fetal protection policies as a basis for prohibiting fertile women from taking high-paying blue collar jobs that might expose them to lead. The to health and life has cost women their bodily integrity (women have been forced to undergo cesarean sections or blood transfusion), their liberty (women have been imprisoned for risking harm to a fetus through alcohol or drug use), and in some cases their lives (a court-ordered cesarean section probably accelerated death in 1987 of Angela Carder, who had a recurrance of bone cancer that had metastasized to her lung). The not to be exposed to pharmaceutical agents has cost pregnant women their right to participate in drug trials that held out their only hope of cure from lethal illnesses. The vehicle for these infringements on pregnant women's rights has been third parties' assertions that they, rather than mother, have authority to speak for fetus in securing these newly defined rights. For example, employers have argued for right to speak for fetus in determining when a work environment inappropriate for fetus. In mandating cesarean section, courts have apparently concluded that judiciary better positioned to speak for fetus and that a competent but dying mother's wishes to refuse surgery are no longer worthy of consideration. Most recently, a state's attorney has taken up cudgel for fetus by charging a woman with murder for her refusal to consent to a cesarean section. It within context of these attempts to wrest right to speak for fetus from mothers that legislation that will expand rights of fetus--such as Unborn Victims of Violence Act--must be considered. The act makes injury or death of a fetus during commission of a crime a federal offense, punishment for which is same as punishment . …