LIFE  AT  CONCEPTION

nat·​u·​ral  per·​son

 

 

In his Harvard Law paper, “Protecting Prenatal Persons and the 14th Amendment,” Joshua Craddock makes the case for protecting innocent human life in the womb by appealing to the 14th Amendment specifically, and many other points in the US Constitution as well.

Mr. Craddock takes us deep into the arguments in both Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey in making his case for protecting children in the womb from the moment of conception.

Central to the cases – and his argument – is the concept of personhood – are children in the womb persons in the eyes of the law?

Just consider the situation in the years leading up to Roe v Wade:

• The laws in every state indicated the state’s interests in protecting children in the womb
  • That means that in the eyes of each state, children were persons, and had a legally protected right to life.
  • Statutory law defined children implicitly as persons.
• Abortion proponents made attempts to eliminate abortion restrictions in nearly every state in the country by introducing bills for consideration or votes.
  • Georgia was one of the first to loosen restrictions, allowing for abortion in the following circumstances:
    • Rape or incest
    • Fetal anomaly
    • The mother’s life or health was at severe risk
  • Alaska was one of the first to legalize nearly all abortions, with a limit placed only at viability.
  • Most other states rejected the attempts outright, maintaining their abortion limitations and prohibitions.

When the efforts in the legislatures failed, abortion proponents turned to the courts, bringing us to Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton.  We’ll focus primarily on Roe v Wade here since it’s in Roe that the concept of personhood was introduced.

 

intent

The goal – or intent – of the Life At Conception Act with respect to children is to protect all innocent human life from the moment of conception to natural end of life within the nearly 19 years of life covered by the LIFE At Conception Act.

Health and medical difficulties that result in a child’s death without the intent of killing the child are excluded from the definition of abortion and are logically and obviously not prohibited by The Life At Conception Act.

 

The LIFE At Conception Act

The end of abortion in Alaska

 

The LIFE At Conception Act is a comprehensive bill that eliminates legalized child killing in Alaska from the moment of conception without exception to the child’s age, level of development, disability, sex, nature of conception, or any other distinguishing characteristic.

The LIFE At Conception Act protects all innocent human life from the moment of conception to natural death by addressing several points in Alaska’s Constitutional and Statutory Laws:

• Eliminates abortion access from the right to privacy, as found in Article 1, Section 22 of the Alaska State Constitution.
• Defines children in the womb from the moment of conception as ‘natural persons.’
• Defines conception as the beginning of the biological development of a human organism, when the sperm and egg fuse.
• Defines abortion as the action taken before or during the birth of a child with the intent to kill the child.
• Repeals Alaska’s abortion laws and statutes, primarily Alaska Statute 18.16.
• Creates criminal penalties for any intentional killing of a child at any age equivalent to negligent homicide, murder, or any other intentional killing of a person.