FRANKFORT, Kentucky, June 18, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Kentucky’s highest court has acknowledged that if an unborn baby is old enough to be viable outside the womb, it should be considered a person. The move now allows for the prosecution of individuals who wrongfully kill a baby while within the womb—voluntary abortion is, however, still allowed. The ruling fails to uphold legislation enacted by Kentucky’s Republican majority, that created a bill last year making “fetal homicide” a crime. The Fetal Homicide Bill made the wrongful death of an unborn child, with the exception of abortion, a crime at any point in the baby’s development. The move also falls short of U.S. President Bush’s Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which acknowledges the personhood of the baby throughout gestation, making it a crime to wrongfully kill a child within the womb at any stage of life. The President’s Act also makes an exception for voluntary acts of abortion.
The decision departs, however, from the court’s former position that the baby was not a person until he was born.
Justice William Cooper said that “. . . the rationale for the ‘born alive’ rule no longer exists,” because medical science can now prove the viability of a child, according to a Fox 41 news account.
In a dissenting opinion, two justices disagreed with the ruling, whereas Justice Donald Wintersheimer wrote a third opinion, claiming the decision was not comprehensive enough. To make a decision that a baby is “viable,” he argued, “is a term of art, nonspecific, constantly changing, and medically and factually of some concern. There is no difference sufficient to justify granting greater consideration to the child in the later stages of development than the child in the earlier stages,” he said.