Continued
III. The state has the responsibility to protect the unborn.
A three judge federal panel ruled concerning the civil right to life:
A. "Once human life has commenced, the constitutional protection found in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments imposes upon the state the duty of safeguarding it." Steinberg v. Rhodes, 321 F. Supp. 741 (N.D. Ohio, 1970)
Rosen v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, 318 F. Supplement 1717 (E.D. La. New Orleans Div., 1970)
(Three person court ruling.)
B. We do not find an equation of the generalized right of the woman to determine whether she shall bear children with the asserted right to abort an embryo or fetus is compelled by fact or logic.
C. . . . the same consideration apply to the argument that a woman has a right to destroy any fetus that she, in the most literal sense, finds "unbearable." This contention to a right to an abortion vested in a woman has, of course, no Constitutional precedent. Nevertheless this contention may be the emotional heart of the almost hysterical attacks being made upon the abortion statutes. No such right is referred to in any of the Amendments to the Constitution; therefore it is necessary to determine whether any such right is implied in any provision of the Bill of rights or can be found within the penumbra of any of the same.
(No such right exists because . . . 16 Am. Jur. 2nd, Constitutional Law, Sec. 60, pp. 687-688.)
. . . And no one who is prevented from injuring another cannot justly assert that he has himself been deprived of any right. Dennis Horan, et. al. "The Legal Case for the Unborn Child," Abortion and Social Justice. (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1972) p. 108-109.
[To be continued]
