In the logic of some, a developing infant in the womb is only a baby if the mom wants it to be. Otherwise, it’s extraneous tissue.
The debate over when a living organism in the womb actually has any rights at all has been debated for decades in America. A bill by Alaska House Rep. Kevin McCabe of Big Lake is proposing to give greater clarity to the definition, and that has abortion-promoters up in arms, fearing that it will lead to a limit on abortions in Alaska.
House Bill 107 has been discussed and debated in House Judiciary Committee this week, where Democrats argue that a fetus having personhood has too many ramifications for abortion.
But McCabe says Alaska has better laws defining death than defining life, and it’s fair to give the Alaska Supreme Court some direction.
The bill was filed over a year ago but has been sitting in the queue in House Judiciary. This week, the debate started, although it’s unclear that the bill would ever pass the liberal majority running the Senate.
“Person” means a natural person or entity that has the moral right of self-determination, McCabe said.
“Life” is defined as the property or quality that distinguishes a living organism from a dead organism or inanimate matter and that is manifested in the function of a metabolism, growth, reproduction, a response to stimuli, or adaption to the environment, each of which originates within the organism, he said.
The Alaska Constitution, in Article I, Section 1, grants all humans the natural right to life.
“Thus, every person’s right to life must be protected by the State. Article 1, section 3, further states that no person is to be denied the enjoyment of any civil or political right because of race, color, creed, sex, or national origin. This is true regardless of age, level of dependency, citizenship, or viability. And this protection must not be denied to any human — even the pre-born. Further, a viability test to determine whether a person’s life is worthy of protection would also be unlawful,” McCabe said in his sponsor statement.
In fact, if a pregnant woman is intentionally injured and loses her child as a result of that injury, the State of Alaska considers that a murder — at any stage of the unborn child’s life. If the mother and unborn child both die, it’s double-homicide, at any stage of the child’s development.
McCabe cites court cases that concur with the establishment of a fetus as a distinct person:
In Gonzales v. Carhart, the Supreme Court wrote that the unborn child is a living individual, separate and distinct from the mother. In this 2007 decision, the Court did not consider the preborn child as merely a part of the mother’s body.
In Bonbrest v. Kotz, Justice McGuire stated: “From the viewpoint of the civil law and the law of property, a child en ventre sa mere is not only regarded as human being, but as such from the moment of conception—which it is in fact.
In Marbury vs. Madison, the court wrote: “The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury… The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right.” That decision cemented the individuality of the pre-born child and guarantees him or her a civil right to claim protection under the law; this includes the right to privacy found in the Alaska Constitution, McCabe argues.
He also cited work by Dr. Horatio R. Storer, who, in the 1800’s wrote:
“Allowing, then, as must be done, that the ovum does not originate in the uterus; that for a time, however slight, during its passage through the Fallopian tube, its connection with the mother is wholly broken; that its subsequent history after impregnation is one merely of development, its attachment merely for nutrition and shelter – it is not rational to suppose that its total independence, thus once established, becomes again merged into total identity, however temporary.”
Storer led the Physicians’ Crusade Against Abortion, and his scientific approach has still not been refuted: The life of the unborn human begins independent of the mother’s body.
“Following the science then, it is illogical to conclude that the life of the pre-born human being (which was previously independent of the mother) ceases to exist during the time that he/she is in the womb. In other words, the egg, and the sperm, which are now subdividing are an independent life and do not terminate just because they have attached to the mother for nurturing and support. When a male sperm meets a female egg, both cease to exist independently, replaced by a living human in the earliest stage of development: conception. This life has separate DNA and is separate from the mother. Every major medical textbook on the subject teaches this,” McCabe writes.
It’s time Alaska defines “person” and “life” for the purpose of the Alaska Constitution, McCabe says: “It’s time to follow science, open our eyes and ears and recognize the personhood of the pre-born. It’s time to fix our Constitution and statutes, and this bill does that.”
Other states have laws that define fetuses as humans, notably Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia.
McCabe has an uphill battle in Alaska, where much of the population is pro-choice. In a 2014 small survey by Pew Research Center, over 60% said abortion should be legal in all cases.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, which promotes abortion, in Alaska, 15,700 of the 146,228 women of reproductive age became pregnant in 2011. 73% of these pregnancies resulted in live births and 12% in induced abortions.
During the Judiciary Committee hearing, Anchorage Democrat Rep. Cliff Groh, D-Anchorage asked McCabe if the law would lead to abortionists being prosecuted for homicide. McCabe said that it was not the intent of HB 107, and Alaska Supreme Court has ruled abortion to be covered by he privacy clause of the Alaska Constitution.
“It’s not the intent of this bill to send the stormtroopers into an abortionist’s office or a doctor that had to perform an abortion for one reason or another,” McCabe said.
Read Alaska’s 2022 abortion report at this State of Alaska Department of Health link. Since 2003, the number of abortions being performed in Alaska has been steadily declining, according to the report. In 2003, there were 1,787 abortions, but by 2022, the number had dropped to 1,238. There is no credible polling that shows if this is because of attitudinal changes toward the procedure or if there are other factors, such as women of child-bearing age moving away; Alaska has been seeing outmigration from the child-bearing age demographic.
Planned Parenthood of Alaska has sent a call for action out to oppose the bill, calling HB 107 “an extremist bill that attempts to assert personhood and legal rights beginning at conception — which could have staggering impacts on the right to abortion, IVF, and some forms of contraception.” In other words, it would cut into the group’s profit margin.
Read legal and scientific arguments about fetal personhood at the National Institutes of Health at this link.
