Post by: Konstantin Oshchepkov
For
the second part of my summer internship, I am clerking with Tom Parker, the
Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. In his chambers, I intern with a
group of staff attorneys working on cases dealing with the rule of law,
including those involving the protection of children. Chief Justice Parker has
issued many judicial opinions regarding protection of unborn children under
existing jurisprudence, explaining that unborn children are recognized and
protected as persons in various aspects of law, and concluding that Roe v. Wade is inconsistent with these
protections.
In
his opinions, Chief Justice Parker has listed existing statutes in many states that
already recognize fetuses as persons with legally-enforceable rights. For
example, states already have laws that give inheritance rights to unborn
children, laws that ban pregnant inmates from being executed, laws that give
fetuses legal guardians for the purposes of protecting their interests, and
laws that allow parents to sue for damages if fetuses are injured or killed as
the result of negligence or some other wrongful act. In one of his opinions, Chief
Justice Parker wrote, “Today, the only major area in which unborn children are
denied legal protection is abortion, and that denial is only because of the
dictates of Roe.”
Step
by step, as a case dealing with unborn children has come to the Alabama Supreme
Court, Chief Justice Parker has taken the opportunity to add his special
concurring opinion, pointing out the logical fallacy of treating the unborn
children as a distinct person in some respects and yet denying them full
personhood when it comes to abortion. All this work is directed at building the
legal foundation for the U.S. Supreme Court to recognize the logical
inconsistency and overturn Roe. (In Ex parte Phillips, Chief Justice Parker
overtly called on SCOTUS to do just that.)
Pro-abortion
advocates are, not surprisingly, deeply worried about the legal arguments that
Chief Justice Parker’s opinions might provide to the U.S. Supreme Court because
his opinions point out all the ways the law already treats unborn children as a
person; meanwhile, the pro-abortion argument against personhood hinges entirely
on the women’s perception of what constitutes a person. It is easy to see why
the U.S. Supreme Court may struggle to reconcile the two views.
This
post was written by Konstantin Oschepkov, an intern with the Center for Global
Justice. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect those of
Regent University, Regent Law School, or the Center for Global Justice.
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