This law essentially says that a human is not a “person” until they pass through the portal of birth, as if the birth canal itself bestows “personhood” on human beings. This is such an arbitrary and silly claim that it makes a mockery of the law not to mention belittles life itself. The idea that you are not a person on one side of the birth canal but you are on the other is absurd–especially in light of the capabilities of modern medicine.

In 2008 a pregnant woman who severely injured her baby in utero by driving recklessly was charged with murder when the baby died six-days after being born. After years of court cases, a New York Appeals court ruled that the baby wasn’t a baby–yes, even though it was alive and outside the mother for six days–and the woman cannot be charged with murder.

Seven years ago Jennifer Jorgensen, who was in the third trimester of her pregnancy, swerved her car into oncoming traffic and ran head long into another car. She killed the two people in the other vehicle and was herself seriously injured. Since her baby was in distress from the wreck doctors birthed the child by cesarian section. The baby lived for only six days before succumbing from injuries received in the crash.

Since the child died from its mother’s actions behind the wheel, the state charged Jorgensen with the murder of the child. Prosecutors reasoned that since the child died after it was born alive and since it died from injuries received in the accident, then Jorgensen was guilty of murder.

After several years of court cases, in 2012 Jorgensen was convicted of killing her child and sentenced to nine years in prison. Naturally she appealed the decision with her attorneys offering a two pronged defense. First they say that she never intended to purposefully kill her baby (so premeditated murder is not the case) and secondly according to New York law her baby wasn’t really a “person” so she couldn’t be convicted of killing it. The reasoning on the latter is that the baby was not yet born during the accident so it didn’t matter that it was pulled out of her later and lived six days outside her before its death.

So, Jorgensen’s defense team appealed still maintaining that the conviction was wrong based on the fact that the baby was not yet born at the time of the accident.

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