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Alexandra Gutierrez, of Alaska Public Radio, reports that the "Alaska Supreme Court rejects fetal personhood initiative". The proposed initiative reads:

Natural Right to Life.

The State of Alaska shall protect the natural right to life and body of all mankind from the beginning of biological development. We the People affirm that the natural right to life and body of the unborn child supersedes the statutory right of the mother to consent to the injury or death of her unborn child. In life threatening situations the law of necessity shall dictate between the life of the mother and her child.

The Alaska Supreme Court decided that the initiative sponsor, Clinton Desjarlais, could not even get signatures on the initiative because it conflicts with Roe v. Wade. The Oklahoma Supreme ruled similarly last year. As a matter of law, this is a facial rejection, meaning that there are no circumstances in which the proposed law could be interpreted in compliance with the “Constitution”, which in pro-abortion speak means Roe.

But this is clearly not the case. For example, the law could apply outside of the abortion context when a drunk driver hits a pregnant woman and kills her unborn child. It could also apply to research that kills a nascent human being outside the womb.

In addition, the Alaska law that defines the scope of proposed initiatives does not limit initiatives by their adherence to Supreme Court rulings or even real constitutionality (the two being quite distinct as in Roe). Here’s the law:

The initiative shall not be used to dedicate revenues, make or repeal appropriations, create courts, define the jurisdiction of courts or prescribe their rules, or enact local or special legislation.

Where in the law does it say that initiatives must conform to unconstitutional Supreme Court rulings? It’s gotta be in there somewhere. Let me take another look.

But when a court wants to trash the rule of law, it can always look to its own precedents, meaning the previous time it trashed the rule of law. And that’s exactly what the Alaska court did.

To summarize, in lieu of ignoring Roe which it should have done, the Alaska Supreme Court was wrong to reject the initiative for at least two reasons:

1. The proposed initiative has valid application outside the abortion context.
2. Alaska law does not exclude initiatives because they contradict Supreme Court rulings.

Unlike the many aborted babies in Alaska, judicial activism is alive and kicking.

William Reville writes in the Science section of the Irish Times the following:

Science does not deal in values and cannot adjudicate on the ethics of abortion. However, abortion is an intervention to halt a biological process; science can describe this process and such understanding is an essential aid to ethical decision-making. I will outline the biological process and also a coherent philosophical position, in my opinion, on abortion. My argument is based on biology and rational analysis. It is motivated by concern for human rights and is not informed by religion.

An individual human life begins at conception when a sperm cell from the father fuses with an egg cell from the mother to form a zygote. This divides into two daughter cells, each daughter divides into two and so the process goes, on and on. After about seven days the developing life implants in the womb where it grows and develops before emerging as a newborn baby. The first three months in the womb is the embryonic stage; after which the developing embryo is a foetus.

Conception is the start of a continuum of an individual human life that ends in death. Under normal circumstances the unfolding along the biological continuum is automatic and self-regulating. Some of the successive stages are zygote, embryo, foetus, baby, child, adult, elderly person. Transitions between these stages are gradual and smooth. This human continuum is fundamentally different from both the preceding sperm and egg cells and the corpse that succeeds it.

The developing entity is unambiguously alive and genetically Homo sapiens from conception and, at every point along the continuum, it has the human properties appropriate to that stage. The full human essence is present everywhere along the continuum. The complete genetic instructions are present in the zygote and guide development along the continuum. I am convinced human life, even at its earliest stages, merits sufficient respect that it not be deliberately killed.

There is (almost) universal agreement that it is morally wrong to deliberately kill a human after birth because you are now dealing with a person. However, many people believe personhood does not exist before a significant stage of foetal development, and consequently hold that killing an embryo or early stage foetus, under circumstances where continuing the pregnancy would cause psychological distress to the mother, is permissible. I believe this argument/position fails under philosophical analysis.

Personhood is typically defined, based on philosophical functionalism, as the capacity to do human things – think, feel, remember, anticipate. The zygote and the early embryo are incapable of these behaviours. Functionalism defines personhood as the ability to do certain things, and the embryo/early foetus is seen as not yet a person. This is often the pro-choice position in the abortion debate. But if the foetus is only a potential person, what is it actually?

Essentialism is an alternative philosophical position that defines a thing according to its essence, not according to its behaviour. In this philosophy, being is actual, functioning is potential. Potential refers to behaviour, not to essence. Thus, personhood, as defined by essentialism, is present all along the human continuum and a zygote or a foetus is a person who is a potential musician, swimmer or singer.

Essentialism harmonises with the smooth biological continuum and with the universal presence of the human essence along the continuum. In my opinion, functionalism confuses being with doing and would, by definition, deny personhood status to a comatose patient, or to a severely intellectually disabled person.

Taking both biology and philosophy into account, I believe the early embryo is a person with potential, not a potential person.

At Politico, Rich Lowry offers a great critique on pro-aborts and their studied avoidance of the word “abortion”. He writes:

President Barack Obama was proud to become the first sitting president to address Planned Parenthood last Friday. But not proud enough to utter the word “abortion.”

The right to abortion is the sneakiest, most shame-faced of all American rights. Its most devoted supporters don’t dare speak its name. They hide behind evasion and euphemism and cant.

Whenever possible pro-abortion “leaders” will talk about “reproductive choice/health/rights”, but rarely talk about abortion and never talk about baby-killing. The further away from the truth they stand, the better they like it.

If abortion is so great, why is Obama ashamed of it? As Mr. Lowry explains:

The National Rifle Association doesn’t get defensive when it is pointed out that it protects the right to bear arms which allows people to buy guns. Charlton Heston, in the famous photo-op, didn’t hesitate to lift a musket over his head.

Yes, why didn’t Obama, at the PP gala, hold up an aborted 10 week fetus above his head and challenge us, “from my cold dead hands”?

See also Nobody is pro-abortion.

Mary Sells reports in the TimesDaily that the Alabama Senate has passed Senator Dick Brewbaker’s proposed resolution SJR 67. The resolution simply declares that the Alabama Supreme Court got it right when it recognized that “child” in the chemical endangerment statute includes unborn children.

Because the resolution has no force of law:

Democrats at the public hearing Tuesday questioned the purpose of it.

“If the court said it was so, what do we need to do, say, ‘Amen?’ ” Rep. James Buskey, D-Mobile, said.

The pro-aborts are correct that the resolution is legally superfluous. But it’s not morally superfluous. We kill thousands of defenseless human beings everyday in America. Every clear thinking individual and legislator should take every opportunity to publicly recognize the humanity of the victims.

Thank you, Senator Brewbaker. The Alabama House is now considering the resolution.

See Is Alabama’s Ankrom ruling judicial activism?