Category: Personhood

Are All Abortions Equal? Should There Be Exceptions to the Criminalization of Abortion for Rape and Incest?

I. Glenn Cohen Leave a comment

Given that it was the subject of my first ever blog post on Bill of Health, I am very pleased to share my new paper: “Are All Abortions Equal? Should There Be Exceptions to the Criminalization of Abortion for Rape and Incest?” which has just been published in the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics (it is behind a paywall, but there is a version they have allowed me to post on SSRN that has all the text but not the formatting that can be freely downloaded).

This paper is likely to piss off people both on the Left and the Right of the abortion issue, which I think of as a feature not a bug ;), but in any event I hope will prompt a good conversation. Here is the abstract:

There was a moment in the 2012 campaign, when Mitt Romney attempted to “pivot” to the center and get away from the statements of those like Todd Akin who made comments about how in cases of “legitimate rape,” the victims’ bodies “have ways to try and shut that whole thing down.” The way Romney did his pivot was to make clear that while he was against abortion, he would, of course, make an exception for women who had been raped or whose pregnancy was the result of incest. This has become something of a moderate orthodoxy among those who oppose abortion. Read More

Bioethicist Art Caplan: Actress Sofia Vergara Can’t Destroy Her Embryos

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A new piece by contributor Art Caplan on NBC News:

Nick Loeb and Sofia Vergara once were a huge item. Today, they are back in the tabloid press because of a dispute over frozen, human embryos.

The 42-year-old actress and star of “Modern Family,” one of the top-earning women in Hollywood, announced her engagement to the wealthy, 40-year old businessman in 2012. Last May, Vergara announced they had split amid a host of abuse allegations.

Their squabble now has grown to include Loeb suing Vergara in California to prevent her from destroying two frozen female embryos, which court documents say they created using in vitro fertilization in November 2013. […]

Read the full article here.

Personhood Measures in the 2014 Election Cycle

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Jonathan F. Will
[Cross-posted at The Conversation]

Citizens of three states had the opportunity to vote on measures considered by many to be adverse to abortion rights during the November 2014 election cycle.  While the personhood efforts in Colorado and North Dakota failed, the Tennessee electorate approved an amendment making clear that their state constitution does not protect a right to abortion, and expressly authorizing the state legislature to regulate abortion services.

Unlike the amendment that passed in Tennessee, the state constitutional amendments proposed in Colorado and North Dakota said nothing explicitly about abortion.  Instead, the measures sought to extend the protections associated with a “right to life” to human beings at all stages of development.  Of course, by extending this aspect of legal personhood to the preborn, abortion necessarily becomes problematic.  But these types of personhood measures have failed in every state to attempt them, including Mississippi, which is considered by many to be the most conservative (and anti-abortion rights) state in the country.  So why are personhood measures failing even while the Tennessee amendment passed?  Read More

Legal Personhood in the New Argentine Civil and Commercial Code

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By Martín Hevia

The Argentine Congress has just passed a new and unified Civil and Commercial Code. The new Code will be effective as of January 2016. The Code covers topics from torts and contracts to family law and in vitro fertilization. It is a massive volume of almost 2700 articles – it is, however, shorter than the current Code, which includes almost 4000 articles -.

One of the main issues in the new Code is the definition of legal personhood. Article 19 of the new Code states that “Human personhood starts with conception”. This wording has been strongly critized because “conception” has been frequently defined as “fertilization.” Critics argue that Art. 19 may imply an obstacle for assisted reproductive technologies: in vitro embryos may be considered “legal persons”, comparable to a live human person. Thus, they may be taken to have the same right to life. In fact, this argument has been accepted by some courts. For example, in 2002, the Supreme Court of Argentina prohibited the production, distribution, and commercialization of Imediat, an emergency contraceptive because of its perceived abortive effects it is considered to violate the right to life, which is regarded as an absolute right that preempts any other right.  For the Court, life begins with the union of the gametes, namely, with fertilization and before implantation. A similar line of reasoning was followed by the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court in 2004.

In contrast, defenders of the wording of Article 19 argue that it should be read together with Article 20, which states that “time of conception is that between the maximum and the minimum length of pregnancy”. This may mean that there cannot be conception outside a woman´s body. Thus, conception is to be understood as “implantation.”  Read More

Colorado Personhood Version 4.0

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By Jonathan F. Will
[Cross-posted at Hamilton and Griffin on Rights.]

This November citizens of Colorado will have an opportunity to vote on a proposed amendment (Amendment 67) to their state constitution that would define the words “person” and “child” in the Colorado Criminal Code and Colorado Wrongful Death Act to include “unborn human beings.”  Similar personhood measures were rejected by a margin of 3-to-1 by Colorado citizens in 2008 and 2010, and a proposal in 2012 failed to receive the requisite signatures to get on the ballot.  Is this version 4.0 all that different?

A New Strategy

In short, the language is different, but not in ways that ought to matter for those concerned about the implications for reproductive rights.  I was initially surprised that a fourth personhood proposal was able to secure enough signatures to get on the ballot when the third measure was not.  After speaking with a reporter from Colorado, it became clear that the strategy this time around was very different.

This most recent personhood effort rode the wave of momentum generated by the 2012 story of a Colorado woman, hit by a drunk driver, who lost her pregnancy in the eighth month of gestation (a boy she had named Brady).  At that time, Colorado did not have a law on the books that permitted the drunk driver to be prosecuted for the death of the fetus.  Amendment 67, advertised as “The Brady Amendment” was offered as a solution, and there was no trouble generating over 100,000 signatures.  Even without Amendment 67, Colorado has since passed a Crimes Against Pregnant Women Act, which criminalizes (with varying degrees of punishment) the termination of a woman’s pregnancy without her consent.  This new law does not define the fetus as a person, expressly permits women to choose to have abortions, and certainly is not considered to go far enough for those in favor of sweeping personhood measures.  Amendment 67 was thus still viewed to be necessary by some. Read More

Art Caplan New Op-Ed: When Does Human Life Begin?

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Art Caplan has a new Op-Ed on The Council for Secular Humanism about when human life begin.

From the piece:

“When does human life begin? For those in the “personhood” movement in the United States, there is no doubt about when that happens—it is at conception, when the sperm meets the egg. The personhood movement has gained a foothold among antiabortion activists who are looking to pass laws that define embryos as people with full rights. Personhood advocates aim to outlaw all abortions, along with in vitro fertilization, embryonic stem-cell research, and emergency contraception. Granting embryos personhood would also mean that someone who killed a pregnant woman at any stage in her pregnancy would be at risk of prosecution for a double homicide. And in those states that restrict a woman’s right to utilize a living will if she is pregnant, no living will could apply from the moment of conception..”

Read the full article.

Art Caplan Says Vasectomy Has No Place in Plea Deal

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Art Caplan has a new opinion piece on NBCNews on the controversy over the case of Jessie Herald, in which he was offered a plea bargain that involved sterilization for a reduced sentencing. From the piece:

Jessie Lee Herald was facing five years or more in prison after a crash in which police and prosecutors said his 3-year-old son was bloodied but not seriously hurt. But Herald cut a deal. Or more accurately, the state agreed to reduce his sentence if he would agree to be cut. Shenandoah County assistant prosecutor Ilona White said she offered Herald, 27, of Edinburg, Virginia, the opportunity to get a drastically reduced sentence if he would agree to a vasectomy. It may not be immediately clear what a vasectomy has to do with driving dangerously and recklessly. It shouldn’t be. There is no connection.

Read the full article.

Animals are Already Legal Persons: On Steven Wise, the Nonhuman Rights Project, and Misguided Personhood Debates

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The New York Times Magazine has just published an interesting piece on the Nonhuman Rights Project and Steven Wise, whose mission is to change the common law status of at least some nonhuman animals from “mere things” to “legal persons.”  (I have previously written on their work here).  It is widely agreed, among both advocates and opponents of Wise’s work, that granting legal personhood to animals would be revolutionary.  I think that this view is mistaken.  To understand why, it is helpful to clarify and differentiate between three possible conceptions of what it might mean to be a “legal person”—a term that is often used in imprecise ways.  Doing so reveals that animals are already legal persons, and that personhood does not itself count for very much. Read More

TOMORROW: Frances Kamm’s Bioethical Prescriptions: Book Talk and Panel Discussion

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Please join us on February 27 at 2:00pm in Wasserstein 1019 at the Harvard Law School as we launch Professor Frances Kamm’s latest book, Bioethical Prescriptions: To Create, End, Choose, and Improve Lives (Oxford University Press, January 2014). The book showcases Professor Kamm’s articles on bioethics as parts of a coherent whole, with sections devoted to death and dying; early life (on conception and use of embryos, abortion, and childhood); genetics and other enhancements (on cloning and other genetic technologies); allocating scarce resources; and methodology (on the relation of moral theory and practical ethics).

Panelists include:

  • Frances Kamm, Littauer Professor of Philosophy & Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; Professor of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University; Former Senior Fellow, Petrie-Flom Center
  • Norman Daniels, Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Harvard School of Public Health
  • Thomas (Tim) Scanlon, Jr., Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University
  • Moderator: Christopher T. Robertson, Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Associate Professor, James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona

This event is free and open to the public. For questions, please contact petrie-flom@law.harvard.edu or 617-496-4662.

Sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics; Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University; and the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund.