Reply #29: just for information

[iverglas]

I've never run across a similar provision in a U.S. state's legislation, but this is what the Criminal Code of Canada says ... in its own archaic language (not one of your often used laws):

http://www.canlii.org/ca/sta/c-46/sec223.html
(my emphasis)

Criminal Code
PART VIII: OFFENCES AGAINST THE PERSON AND REPUTATION
Homicide

When child becomes human being

223. (1) A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, whether or not

(a) it has breathed;
(b) it has an independent circulation; or
(c) the navel string is severed.

Killing child

(2) A person commits homicide when he causes injury to a child before or during its birth as a result of which the child dies after becoming a human being.

Subsection (1) is a "deeming provision" -- it seems something to be a human being, for the purposes of the particular law, that in fact is not a human being: a delivered fetus that has not drawn breath, does not have independent circulation, has not had the navel string severed.

That's a tiny but perhaps significant step to one side of the grey area that is "birth", i.e. the process by which a fetus becomes a human being. As is obvious from the things listed in the provision, there really is no instant at which a fetus becomes a human being.

In fact, no one could ever know whether the delivered fetus would have breathed etc. at all if the intervening act had not been committed; some fetuses simply fail to breathe, for instance, and thus are stillborn rather than successfully born. So a prosecution could well involve punishing someone for doing something that did not in fact "kill" the delivered fetus. It's problematic for that reason.

But not nearly as problematic as defining the destruction of an undelivered fetus as homicide.