A New York court recently ruled that a Long Island woman who killed her baby in a car accident cannot be convicted because her baby was not a person yet. Jennifer Jorgensen was in her third trimester when the car accident occurred in May 2008. Her daughter was delivered by C-section after the head-on collision and died six days later, according to the report.
The central question in the case was whether the state Legislature intended ‘to hold pregnant women criminally responsible for engaging in reckless conduct against themselves and their unborn fetuses, such that they should be subject to criminal liability for prenatal conduct that results in postnatal death? Under the current statutory scheme, the answer to this question is no.
Not all of the judges agreed on the ruling. In a dissent, Judge Eugene Fahey wrote, “I cannot join in a result that analyzes our statutes to determine that a six-day-old child is not a person.” Currently in the U.S., 37 states recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in some circumstances, according to the National Right to Life Committee. New York has two conflicting statutes about the protection of unborn children from violence, according to National Right to Life. Life seems so cheap now-a-days, that courts dictate life and death, as if they are deciding on what to have for lunch. My goodness where have we gone? What do you think?