In 1973, when the U.S. Supreme court rendered its decision in the case of Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113 [1973]), the ruling of the Court established both the privacy rights of pregnant women with respect to an elective abortion and then identified the interest of the stat vis-a-vis abortion. Specifically, the Court held that a pregnancy could be divided into three periods (trimesters); during the first trimester the woman had an essentially unrestricted right to choose abortion in consultation with her physician (Hall, 1992). In the second trimester, when according to medical experts an abortion posed a greater threat to a woman's health, the states were permitted to regulate abortion to protect a woman's health.
In the third and final trimester of the pregnancy, the state's "compelling interest" in protecting the life of the fetus was seen as great enough to warrant severe restrictions on abortion. Even then, Justice Harry Blackmun, speaking for the majority of the Court, held that states must permit abortion if necessary to preserve the life of the woman (Hall, 1992). In the course of this analysis, Justice Blackmun stated that:
because of uncertainty about the medical and moral status
of the fetus, the states could not adopt a particular
theory of when life begins - they could not decide, for
example, that because life begins at conception fetuses
have the same rights as newborn infants (Hall, 1992, p.
Following the decision in Roe, opponents of abortion rights moved to secure a more concrete determination of when a fetus could be said to have rights. It is this issue, which has been taken up by the Court but not fully resolved, that will be the focus of the present report. It will be demonstrated herein that the Court has moved to define the rights of the fetus and tangentially addressed the question of whether or not the fetus is a person. However, a final determination of the answer to this question has ...