COURT RULES FETUS A PERSON

by Glen on 2001-05-24 01:20:22

The Associated Presse reports: “The state Supreme Court ruled that a fetus is a person in a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by a man whose wife and
unborn child died during birth procedures. In reversing a lower court on Thursday, the Supreme Court cited a 1999 law that changed the state’s criminal
code to include a living fetus of 12 weeks gestation in the definition of a person.

The case stemmed from the Dec. 13, 1995, death of Evangeline Aka and her unborn son about 30 hours after she was admitted to the hospital so labor
could be induced. Aka’s husband, Philip, claimed the defendants were medically negligent in unnecessarily inducing his wife’s labor, failing to
discontinue the procedure, failing to perform a caesarean section, failing to resuscitate his wife or the unborn baby and failing to obtain informed
consent”