From: no_offline_contact@example.com   
      
   On 2026-02-15 12:53 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:   
   > Rhino  wrote:   
   >> On 2026-02-15 2:53 a.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:   
   >>> Rhino  wrote:   
   >>>> On 2026-02-14 9:01 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:   
   >>>>> Rhino  wrote:   
   >>>>>> On 2026-02-14 4:30 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:   
   >   
   >>>>>>> A lawyer commenting repeated my line that a woman who spontaneously   
   >>>>>>> aborts in the first month or two of pregnancy can be charged with   
   >>>>>>> murder. This has massive implications for the clinical treatment of   
   >>>>>>> women in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances.   
   >   
   >>>>>>> The wall of separation between church and state has been breached.   
   >   
   >>>>>>> https://apnews.com/article/puerto-rico-923-governor-sign   
   d-law-pregnancies-9d2f1fb895a17511a920cc42d480668e   
   >   
   >>>>>> I think you could make a case for that breach to have happened in Roe v.   
   >>>>>> Wade. The Supremes essentially drew a dividing line saying abortion was   
   >>>>>> fine at such-and-such a point in the gestation cycle; the Puerto Rico   
   >>>>>> decision just moved the line.   
   >   
   >>>>> I'm not seeing your point. Blackman was criticized at the time for both   
   >>>>> the arbitrary time ranges, which were not based on landmarks in   
   >>>>> gestation, and his notion of when viability might occur, which he just   
   >>>>> made up. Viability was a moving target anyway, given advances in   
   >>>>> technology.   
   >   
   >>>>> Where's the religion?   
   >   
   >>>> It seems to me that the Supreme Court justices ruled as they did at   
   >>>> least partially out of their own beliefs about when life began, which   
   >>>> would surely be informed by whatever religious beliefs they had.   
   >   
   >>> Everybody agrees that the embryonic being is alive. Please distinguish   
   >>> between life and human life.   
   >   
   >> If a fetus in the womb is not human life, what is it then? A dog? A   
   >> chicken?   
   >   
   > Again we are discussing a newly-enacted amendment to the criminal   
   > code. Please focus on that. If it's a human being at fertilization,   
   > the motivation is to redefine what would have been ordinary medical   
   > care as homicide in which either the medical team or mother could   
   > be prosecuted. This is not limited to prohibiting abortions, but any   
   > situation that is medical or traumatic in which the mother is no longer   
   > capable of carrying a baby that will be born healthy to term without   
   > medical or surgical intervention in which the foetus won't survive. As   
   > unlike trimesters birth is a bright-line distinction, that is a logical   
   > point of demarcation to make in law.   
   >   
   >>>> You   
   >>>> don't really believe that their decision was entirely on the basis of   
   >>>> statute law do you? Aren't we all informed at least in part by whatever   
   >>>> we were told when we were young by clergy, schools, and parents?   
   >   
   >>> Well, if you want judicial activism, that's one way to get it by   
   >>> ignoring the Constitution, statutes, common law, and precedent.   
   >   
   >>> Big chunks of the decision was judicial activism, but human life   
   >>> beginning with live birth was from common law.   
   >   
   >> I think that's because until very recently - within my lifetime - it was   
   >> almost unheard of for a premature infant to survive. It probably made   
   >> sense to set the beginning of life as the point at which the baby   
   >> emerged from the womb since that was the practical and readily   
   >> measurable point at which life was visible.   
   >   
   > Hence Blackburn's unscientific "viability" reasoning was criticized at   
   > the time since rabid advancement in technology made imagining entirely   
   > artificial wombs within a decade or so not extremely speculative at all.   
   >   
   >> New medical technologies and techniques have made it possible for   
   >> significantly premature babies to survive now so the question of where   
   >> life begins is not so clear cut any more.   
   >   
   > That doesn't mean change the common law definition. With the foetus   
   > birthed through a surgical procedure separating it from it's mother, a   
   > separate team handles incubation, if there is some possibility of   
   > survival. There are now two patients to treat and at this point, the   
   > mother is being helped without considering the consequences to the baby.   
   >   
   Agreed. What's your point?   
      
   >> We've had a comparable situation with death. Again with my lifetime,   
   >> we've changed the definition of death from when the heart stopped to the   
   >> point where brain activity ceases because a heart stopping is not   
   >> necessarily the end of life any more.   
   >   
   > Have we? I'm not sure there haven't been multiple definitions all along.   
   > What's troubling are those circumstances in which the body goes into a   
   > state in which it's appeared to have died as it struggles to heal and   
   > the doctor declaring death fails to notice that the patient might   
   > actually survive.   
   >   
   I remember reading about a woman in the Soviet Union who went into a   
   coma in 1952. I don't know if she needed any specific machinery to keep   
   her alive like a vent or only needed to be fed but she stayed in that   
   coma until 1986, then regained consciousness. I don't know what became   
   of her after her 34 year coma but I've always wondered what she thought   
   of how the times had changed during her "absence". After all, Stalin was   
   still in charge and was still having enemies done away with when she   
   lost consciousness and she regained consciousness during Gorbachev's   
   massive reforms. The contrast must have been truly mind-boggling.   
      
   Sorry, that's not quite on topic since I don't know that the doctor's   
   ever seriously considered just letting her die; that memory was inspired   
   by your scenario. I don't know if anyone who had ever been deemed beyond   
   hope by a doctor due to brain injury has ever been allowed to live   
   anyway and then recovered....   
      
   Or maybe I do. I'm just remembering the case of a little boy that   
   suffered from hydrocephaly ("water on the brain"). The situation was   
   discovered when he was still in the womb and there was so much water in   
   his brain that his brain was compressed into only 3% of the space   
   normally occupied by a brain. Doctors said he'd be a complete vegetable   
   when he was born and there was only one slim shot for him if they did an   
   in utero procedure that drained much of the water. The parents agreed to   
   the procedure and the boy turned out to be very close to normal even   
   though they hadn't succeeded in improving the volume of the brain very   
   much. Apparently, the doctors/scientists were astounded at the level of   
   "neuro-plasticity" (ability of the brain to rewire itself) this boy showed.   
      
   100 years ago, no one would have had any idea that the fetus had a   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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