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From: pwk@ccice2.UUCP (Paul W. Karber)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: dogs, cats, and kids
Message-ID: <654@ccice2.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 8-Oct-85 22:49:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: ccice2.654
Posted: Tue Oct  8 22:49:13 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Oct-85 21:11:58 EDT
References: <739@ttidcc.UUCP>
Reply-To: pwk@ccice2.UUCP (Paul W. Karber)
Followup-To: net.abortion
Organization: CCI Central Engineering, Rochester, NY
Lines: 44
Keywords: person, Arizona Supreme Court
Summary: What can you do if the MD kills your fetus?

In article <739@ttidcc.UUCP> regard@ttidcc.UUCP (Adrienne Regard) writes:
>
>Two issues here -- public policy and personal response.
>
>I happen to be 7 months pregnant.  Fetus already has a name, and likes to
>tap dance late at night -- evidence of personality already.  BUT. . .
>
>If my doctor bungled my last pre-delivery exam and slit little fetus'
>throat, I'd be (hopefully understandably) angry enough to be moved to
>violence, myself.  HOWEVER, as a matter of public policy, the doctor would
>be guilty of something less than murder.  Personally, I'd want the greatest
>revenge and/or punishment that the law would allow, but I couldn't string
>him up for "murdering" something that was still only a potential. (For
>instance, it could still have died in the normal course of delivery.)

from another source (in other words not me :-)

	"The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that a 
	viable fetus, even though stillborn, is a person under the law
	for the purposes of making a wrongful death claim in a
	malpractice suit. In a decision that the plaintiffs' attorney
	said would set an important precedent, the court held that
	
		"There is no logic in the premise that if a viable infant
		dies immediately after birth in is not a 'person' but
		that if it dies immediately after birth it is a 'person'."

	The court rejected the idea that the law would permit recovery
	of damages only if an injured fetus survived or died after birth."

Just thought you'ld want to know what you could do. (in Arizona)

>Many fetuses survive after 7 months gestation and pre-mature birth.
>Because they CAN doesn't mean that we can pass laws (public policy) on what
>statistically SHOULD be the outcomes, and declare it human as of that 7
>months date (or any other arbitrary date).  That perhaps it CAN survive
>outside the mother's body doesn't mean anything, unless it IS surviving
>outside the mother's body.  It isn't a baby til it's born.

Maybe not but in Arizona it's a 'person'. :-)

-- 

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