By: Brittany Durst
As of last month, the state of North Carolina recognizes an unborn child’s personhood from the point of conception. After the 2007 murder of a pregnant Fuquay-Varina woman, four Republican legislators sponsored early versions of The Unborn Victims of Violence Act (GS 14-23.1), or Ethen’s Law, which charges the murderer of a pregnant woman with two homicides. Not until four years later – after republicans gained control of the legislature – did the bill receive a hearing. By May 2011, the bill had passed safely through the House, the Senate, and Governor Perdue’s office. Ethen’s Law took effect on December 1, 2011. Without a doubt, this unprecedented legislation represents a victory for all North Carolinians: murderers of pregnant women can finally be brought to justice. However, Ethen’s Law has subtle yet unmistakable implications for the prochoice movement.
Legal abortions in North Carolina remain safe; personhood is only granted to unborn children in the case of murder or manslaughter. But the game has changed; the pro-choice movement can no longer hide behind the politically correct “woman’s right to choose”. Ethen’s Law has at last revealed the definition of “pro-choice”: human beings’ power to determine which of us have a right to humanity. This dilemma is embedded in the language of Ethen’s Law. The first sentence reads (emphasis added), “As used in this Article only, ‘unborn child’ means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.” In the “When Abortion Not Unlawful” statute (GS 14 45.1), the unborn child disappears behind the words “pregnancy,” “miscarriage,” and “abortion.” In this second article, however, “a person is guilty of the separate offense of voluntary manslaughter of an unborn child if the person unlawfully causes the death of an unborn child by an act that would be voluntary manslaughter if it resulted in the death of the mother.” A noble statute? Certainly. Some prochoice legislators’ preference? Not entirely.
A brief look into the General Assembly Scripts on the NCGA website reveals Ethen’s Law’s history – and the opinions of pro-choice legislators. On March 24, 2011, Democratic representative Phillip Haire proposed an amendment applying Ethen’s Law only to unborn children over twelve weeks and reducing the sentence from murder to voluntary manslaughter for unborn children between twelve and twenty weeks. On April 14, Democratic senator Eleanor Kinnaird proposed an amendment which only applied Ethen’s Law to murderers of unborn children over twenty weeks. Both amendments failed.
I have no intention of debating the legitimacy of a twelve, twenty, or two week cutoff for an unborn child’s personhood. Instead, I point out that pro-choice legislators have revealed themselves by qualifying an unborn child’s personhood with the involvement of a third party. When a third party takes an unborn child’s life with the pregnant woman’s consent, it is abortion. When a third part takes an unborn child’s life without the pregnant woman’s consent, it is murder. Legal abortion gave women the right to choose. Now we all know what they are choosing. The pro-choice movement believes in the assigned, not inherent, value of human life. With the passage of Ethen’s Law, they can no longer conceal this belief. Governor Perdue herself has signed it into state law: an unborn child is only a person if the mother wants him or her to be one.
