Court Opinion

ID: 9544956
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:04:00.147836+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:13:49.096352
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
specially concurring.
The Court’s opinion is sound; I write only to join battle against the semantic scalpel thrust at it by the dissent of the Chief Justice. Conceding, as I do, that the statutory law would be more forthright if the phrase “in the event of its subsequent birth” was deleted from I.C. § 32-102, that section makes it beyond dispute that an unborn child is deemed an existing person. As such, it necessarily will arrive in the outside world either by its mother giving birth to it, or its removal from her womb by Caesarean section. But, in either event, I *575would submit that it is born. It may enter the outside world alive, or it may not. The statute does not require that such unborn child, “deemed an existing person while it so remains unborn,” shall be born alive. The legislature could very easily have inserted the word “live” so that the section would read:
“A child conceived, but not yet born, is to be deemed an existing person so far as may be necessary for its interests, in the event of its subsequent live birth.”
But, it did not.
There is no question but that in this case, as the Court’s opinion states, the unborn child was a viable fetus. In fact, it was more so a viable fetus than viable fetus is construed by the legislature, which goes so far as to allow for artificial aid in declaring that a viable fetus is such if “potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb.” I.C. § 18-604(7).
At the time of oral argument in this case, we had just recently considered State v. Goodrick, 102 Idaho 811, 641 P.2d 998 (1982), wherein assault with intent to commit rape was committed by threatening to kick a pregnant woman in the stomach. The issue presented in that case, and likewise in this, was whether the defendant, had he committed the threatened dastardly deed, and killed an unborn child, could have been charged with murder. It seemed to me that he could, and so it seems also that in this case, accepting that the law should assess such criminal liability, there should be concomitant civil liability. In that regard my earlier conclusions now seem well fortified by the recent en banc opinion of the Oregon Supreme Court in Libee v. Permanente Clinic, 268 Or. 258, 518 P.2d 636, 637 (1974), cited in the briefs of appellants and of Amicus Curiae.
Regarding the Chief Justice’s reliance on Justus v. Atchison, 139 Cal.Rptr. 97, 565 P.2d 122 (1977), I remain unconvinced that our I.C. § 32-102 is identical with California’s Civil Code § 29, which conclusion I arrive at simply by comparison. Moreover, this 1977 California case is not persuasive in relation to our interpretation of a statute which was enacted in 1887. I do see from Justus that that court in 1970 ruled against my belief that the killing of an unborn child would be murder, but also note that the legislature quickly overruled that court’s opinion. An observation that should find much general appeal and with which I heartily agree, was made by the California court in Justus:
“We are not so naive as to believe that the Legislature entertained any intent at all with respect to fetuses when it first addressed the question of recovery for wrongful death in 1862 and 1872.” 565 P.2d at 132.
That statement will, to some, seem appropriate to the validity of the dissenting opinion, especially where the Idaho legislature, in 1973, addressed the status of viable fetuses, as it did in I.C. § 18-604(7).