Resolved: A fetus' life may be legally sacrificed to protect the life of the mother.

Whew, you've sure given me plenty to work with, thanks for helping me develop this argument. ___________________________________________________ "Radiation professionals are required to identify embryos/fetus/nursing child receiving dose of radiation by social security number. " The site actually says: "Requires employers licensed by Nuclear Regulatory Commission to report medical event and radiation dose to embryo/fetus/nursing child and identify persons by name and social security number. " When read more carefully, one can see that this is detailing two entirely different things- a regulation requiring a report of radiation effects on children and another regulation requiring all persons in reports be identified by SSN. Since the absolute earliest point, according to the SSA website, that a person can apply for a SSN is on their birth certificate, this regulation obviously does not apply to fetuses. _____________________________________________________ "2003 provision in SCHIP which applies citizenship to unborn fetuses so their undocumented mothers can receive prenatal care. " Thank you for bringing this to my attention! This is a very interesting update to SCHIP. The problem is that nowhere in the SCHIP, nor in the summary provided, does the SCHIP "apply citizenship" to a fetus, it simply identifies the fetus as a prospective citizen, and thus they decided that they cannot deny it medical care when it is helpless in the womb. I believe the amendment to be unconstitutional. The fetus is not a US citizen and SCHIP should not give it free health care. However- even if you accept that the fetus is a citizen in the womb, then you must concede another of your points. the document states: "Thus a fetus, rather than the pregnant woman, is the recipient of SCHIP-funded services. This approach potentially limits the scope of services available to the pregnant woman to those directly related to the health of the fetus. " Why would they put this little footnote in? Because they recognize that as an illegal non-citizen, the pregnant woman is NOT entitled to free health care and the protection of her right to life through government insurance. In this situation, the U. S. government would value the life of the fetus over that of the mother by making it the beneficiary of better health care, simply because the fetus is a prospective citizen. This case confirms that the U. S. govt. values citizen's lives over non-citizens. ___________________________________________________ "Rules for the state of Oregon requiring a Social Security Number to be provided for a certificate of death. Rules also requiring a certificate of death for the transportation of a dead fetus for burial. " First of all, I don't understand your fixation with the SSN. The number is handed out to people to track income and calculate benefit, not to confirm citizenship or life. Why the SSA EVER hand out a number to a dead fetus who will never have any income is beyond me, but if you say it occurs in some places, I won't dispute you on that. What I will dispute you on is your assertion that this is a universal rule. .. This is an Oregon statute, only applicable in Oregon, which even includes this provision: "(5) An authorization for final disposition issued under the laws of another state which accompanies a dead body or fetus brought into this state shall be authority for final disposition of the body or fetus in this state. " This both confirms that other states do not have the same procedures for issuing birth and death certificates and SSN's before burial, but allows those provisions to be valid in Oregon, confirming my point that there is not universal declaration of a fetus' life or citizenship. ____________________________________________________ "A fetus is alive by federal law. The murder of a pregnant woman is a double murder and a federal offense. This is not a state issue. " "Your arguments for importance of life of a citizen over that of non-citizens has been challenged by federal murder laws, which consider a murderer anyone who takes ANY life under malicious means- even the life of a non-citizen by a citizen. You have failed to prove any of your points. .. " This is completely untrue. Murder is not a federal crime. There is absolutely no statute anywhere in U. S. code that allows murder to be charged as a federal crime. The person can be charged with Terrorism or Treason in case of an assassination or act of terror, or charged with murder as an aggravating factor on a drug offense, but there is NO federal statute defining murder or defining a fetus as a human life. Murder is a state crime, and the statues are written differently in every state. NC law in fact specifically prohibits charging murder of a pregnant woman as double murder, and the fact that this has not been challenged by the US Supreme court proves that the federal government does not believe that a fetus is universally a US citizen. ______________________________________________________________________________ "You have not made this point clear, rather you have made affirmative assertions without any legal bearing. I have provided case law showing how a fetus is considered alive by federal law, and how is may be considered a citizen by state law- in some cases it has to be recognized before it can by buried. " You have provided no cases nor case law that show that a fetus is considered alive or a U. S. citizen by federal law. Moving on. .. ______________________________________________________________________________ "Not true. This is a line from Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" speech, not the Constitution. " Sorry, I should have remembered this. I concede this point. ______________________________________________________________________________ "The murder of a non-citizen is treated as murder, not as the "murder of a non-citizen" with lesser penalties. You cannot provide any scenario where the life of a citizen is legally valued over the life of a non-citizen. You can appeal to emotion, but it's not an argument based on fact. Since the burden of proof is on you, I challenge you to provide a source for this argument. " All right. Look at the circumstances in which the Fourteenth amendment was passed. Its purpose was, generally, to state that all persons born or naturalized in the U. S. are first and foremost U. S. citizens and are therefore entitles to all associated rights, privileges and immunities. This was done specifically to reverse the Dred Scott decision which stated that blacks were not citizens and thus did not have a right to life, liberty, or property. If citizenship does not grant a person more rights or more validity or value under the law, then why make this declaration? Why not simply say that all Americans, citizens or not, were human beings, and guarantee universal human rights in our constitution? The answer is, because we recognize that being a U. S. citizen means you are entitled to U. S. protection. It is the same justification we give for not ratifying the UN's universal declaration of human rights or the Geneva Conventions or even the Rome Statute creating the ICC. As a U. S. citizen every one of us is entitled to protection by our government, especially when it is a choice of protecting either us or a foreign national. It isn't enough to say that there are no examples available- this doesn't prove that the action is illegal, it just proves that it isn't confirmed as legal. I believe that the constitution allows an American Citizen to protect her life by removing a parasitic organism that is going to kill her from her body, even if that parasite is human. We have no such direct obligation to protect said parasitic organism unless it is a U. S. citizen, and as I have shown, it is not. Thanks again M. for this wonderful debate. It has helped me a lot in fleshing out this argument.