My version of those answers: yes and yes. To expand, in my view a fetus is alive but does not yet possess the same legal protections of other levels of human development. And yes, a fetus can be an American if we were to decide so but as things currently stand they are not.
And now no Huckabeeing from you: Yes or no, are only American lives deserving of legal protection?
If no, then the second half of your question (can fetuses be citizens) is thoroughly irrelevant and we're back to arguing simply when life attaches legal protection (which is a moral question and regardless of how answered forces one morality on the dissenters). If yes, then I want to be able to kill Canadians.
Strangler Lewis, as you say, the government can change its determination on ESA laws or whatever at its will. However, it is increasingly common to see due process claims trying to stop any effort to loosen them (the claim is not that a tree has a due process right but that there is some sort societal due process that wasn't performed). I don't know that they've been particularly successful with this course but I didn't say they were, just that it was a widening avenue of approach and that it has implications on the abortion debate as it becomes more successful.
Also, the Supreme Court could decide tomorrow to repeal its legislation that fetuses are deserving of no legal protection and there's nothing the pro-choice crowd could do about it, in fact even less than if tomorrow Congress decided to exterminate all non-human mammals larger than ferrets.
|