Questions remain on rights of unborn
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Editor,
A published response to my question of how those who argue that a fertilized embryo is entitled to constitutional rights dissolves into a diatribe about a scientific report and concludes with the unsubstantiated statement of constitutional protection, offering no insight.
So again I ask, if you hold this view, how do you see the real life extension of that philosophy being applied? Where does the constitutional protection for the child end? Do we not have a responsibility to punish mothers while carrying the child if they do things science can prove damages the fetus such as smoking, drinking etc? And I am not even going to the secondhand damage issue. Do we not have a responsibility to punish a man who strikes a pregnant woman for child endangerment? Do we ignore the rights of the child to a healthy growth once some mystical age is reached? What about a pregnant woman’s need for proper nutrition for her child, diet habits or ability to afford food or perhaps homelessness? All these issues relate to the baby’s growth, and in your view apparently a constitutional right, one that the state or federal government must protect since the infant cannot.
In your version, where and how do you protect the child without limiting the parents’ constitutional rights? And does a fertilized egg in a test tube have the same rights, or do you see the Constitution granting variations depending on circumstance? And does not citizenship, which is how we obtain the rights of our Constitution, apply to any fertilized egg while on US soil? I recently read an article where other nationalities purposely come to America to have their child born here, thus creating dual citizenship for the child by our Constitution. It seems the life at conception idea extends this right to those who vacation here and claim that is where conception occurred.
So help me see what you see when you tell me abortion laws have subverted the Constitution. What I hear is such a shallow view of how our Constitution is to be applied to serve one issue that it appears to me to be a hypocritical interpretation just to support a religious or ethical viewpoint on one issue, abortion. I have no objection to arguments against abortion when they are based on those ideas. I do object to the idea of abortion being against the Constitution, when in fact, you want only one right given the fetus.
Richard J Bell
Polson
