Life hangs by a thread, so does Griswold and Privacy...

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Re: Happy birthday Griswold v. Connecticut

A constitutional amendment or supreme court ruling that establishes conception as the start of human life would lead to some rather strange consequences.

Illinois, for instance, has a law that states:

Without in any way restricting the right of privacy of a woman or the right of a woman to an abortion under those decisions, the General Assembly of the State of Illinois do solemnly declare and find in reaffirmation of the longstanding policy of this State, that the unborn child is a human being from the time of conception and is, therefore, a legal person for purposes of the unborn child's right to life and is entitled to the right to life from conception under the laws and Constitution of this State.

720 ILCS 510/1. This law has, by and large, been regarded as merely precatory (advisory), but it has been used at least twice to raise some unusual legal questions.

In one situation, a pregnant woman was arrested for shoplifting and incarcerated in the county jail. A lawyer came forward, claiming to represent not the woman but the fetus. His argument: because Illinois considers life to begin at conception, the fetus was a citizen of Illinois. And since the fetus was being held in jail without being charged with any crime, the lawyer brought a habeas corpus action on behalf of the wrongfully incarcerated fetus. Of course, the lawyer couldn't explain how the fetus could be released from jail without releasing the mother, but then the mother wasn't his client so she wasn't his concern.

More recently, a couple undergoing fertility treatments sued the clinic for mistakenly disposing of a fertilized blastocyst. Rather than suing for breach of contract or destruction of property, however, they sued for wrongful death -- again, relying upon the Illinois law that states that life begins at conception. Surprisingly, the trial court rejected a defense motion to dismiss the suit, holding that the plaintiffs had at least a plausible case. He wrote: "Philosophers and theologians may debate. But there is no doubt in the mind of the Illinois legislature when life begins. It begins at conception." (read a news account here)

Undoubtedly, the proponents of these types of laws are primarily interested in outlawing abortion, but it seems equally clear to me that many of them are also taking aim at birth control pills, IUDs, fertility treatments, and who knows what else. I'm tempted to say that the kind of cases that I've outlined above are the unintended consequences of a law that defines life as beginning at conception, but I'm not convinced that those consequences are necessarily unintended.

EDIT: cleared up a somewhat confusing sentence

Just wait until some of the non-activist judges we've been hearing about start reviewing the current state of the law and begin finding that protecting the life of the embryo supersedes that of protecting the life of the mother so that, for example, she could not take chemo-therapy drugs to save her own life if those drugs would endanger the/her fetus. Suppose that a married woman with cancer wanted to take on a chemo routine and her life-begins-at-conception believing husband objected, could he prevent her from trying to save her own life?

Joe/ The article you raised several other things I had not considered. If the 500,000 frozen embryos are living beings than doesn't that make any and all the fertility clinics involved liable for those "lives"? If a technician at one of the clinics, after hearing that she might be fired, unplugged one of the refrigerators and destroyed 10,000 embryos could the State indict for mass murder?

Quite possibly. Right now, the state's interest in preserving the life of the fetus does not outweigh the woman's right to privacy in the first trimester of her pregnancy. If the fetus (or fertilized ovum or blastocyst or whatever) is considered to be a person, however, the government (and others) would have a greater interest in dictating the woman's decisions regarding her own body and well-being.


Under the reasoning adopted by the court in the case that I cited, I think the answer might be "yes." Anyone who destroyed 10,000 fertilized eggs would be the greatest mass-murderer in American history.

I voted for privacy not governmental control. Big surprise.

Could a woman in Illinois who intended to give her child up for adoption claim herself as a foster parent and collect money from the state?

Could an attorney sue for say, false imprisonment, on behalf of frozen embryos?

Are we going to have to stretch things to the limits of absurdity before people really start thinking about the consequences of their rhetoric?

False imprisonment of embryos? That gave me a laugh. Thanks Boomer.

Hmmm, I'm not sure.


I suppose, if the clinic refuses to hand over the eggs to the "parents."


No. Clearly, we are going to have to stretch them beyond the limits of absurdity.

Boomerang: If I told you six years ago that the governing bodies of the the State of Florida, including the Governor, had met in special session to attempt to intervene on behalf of one of it's citizens involved in a lawsuit regarding life support, you probably wouldn't be all that surprised, but if I said that the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States would meet in extraordinary session in order to pass a bill, not just issue a Statement of the Consensus or a Resolution, but a bill and, and this is the good part, that the President of the United States would, in the middle of his vacation, leave his ranch and fly through the night air to Washington, D.C. in order to sign that bill into Federal Law, would you think I was stretching things to the limits of absurdity?

I don't think it is any stretch at all to go from the language the Bush administration uses in regard to stem cell research ie "destroying one life to save others is wrong" and applying it fully in regard to the rest of us and our lives. It was only forty years ago that in the State of Connecticut all forms of birth control were illegal and so was the distribution of information about those forms and methods, including by a practicing medical doctor. These restrictions were overturned in part by the Supreme Court's decision that citizen's have a right to privacy.

Now we hear from many conservative voices that this right to privacy was simply made out of whole cloth, that the Constitution does not secure any such right. What kind of stretch does it take to get from embryonic life is sacred and inviolate to passing a bill protecting that life and any method used to counter the creation of such and then getting a President out of his vacation bed for another middle of the night flight?

Joe(What makes the life of a fiction writer so hard these days is that reality has become creepily bizarre.)Nation

Whenever I see this kind of stuff I never fail to recall what happened when we first realized that Mo's family had deserted him.

He'd been here about six months when we realized that they weren't coming back so we started calling the alphabet agencies trying to find some protection for him and for us.

"Not interested."

Frozen embryos deserve protection but two year old boys don't.

The whole thing makes me sick.

Those little embryos ought to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps dadgumit!

Their masters get them to focus on the unborn and the near dead, but leave them to fend for themselves throughout life.

Joe(makes me want to holler)Nation

In your honor , Ive changed my previously happy sig.

That is a wonderful signature!

So sad and so true.

Perhaps I shall organzie a drive to knit bootstraps for the little dears.