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Concept
Fetal rights
Summary
Fetal rights are the moral rights or legal rights of the human fetus under natural and civil law. The term fetal rights came into wide usage after Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark case that legalized abortion in the United States. The concept of fetal rights has evolved to include the issues of maternal substance use disorders, including alcohol use disorder and opioid use disorder. Most international human rights charters "clearly reject claims that human rights should attach from conception or any time before birth." While international human rights instruments lack a universal inclusion of the fetus as a person for the purposes of human rights, the fetus is granted various rights in the constitutions and civil codes of several countries.
History of abortion law debate
In antiquity, the fetus was sometimes protected by restrictions on abortion. Some versions of the Hippocratic Oath indirectly protected the fetus by prohibiting abortifacients. Until approximately the mid-19th century, philosophical views on the fetus were influenced in part by Aristotelian concept of delayed hominization. According to it, human fetuses only gradually acquire their souls, and in the early stages of pregnancy the fetus is not fully human. Relying on examinations of miscarried fetuses, Aristotle believed that male fetuses acquire their basic form at around day 40, and female ones at day 90. For Pythagoreans, however, fetal life was co-equal in moral worth with adult human life from the moment of conception; similar views were held by Stoics. Ancient Athenian law did not recognise fetal right to life before the ritual acknowledgement of the child. The law, however, allowed for the postponement of the execution of sentenced pregnant women until a baby was delivered.
Several Hindu texts on ethics and righteousness, such as Dharmaśāstra, give fetus a right to life from conception, although in practice such texts are not always followed.
The property law of the Roman Empire granted fetus inheritance rights.
Official source
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