. . . While in California, a Court Affirms the Humanity of a Fetus : Abortion: The fetal-murder decision will topple the illogic of the pro-choice movement.

Monday’s California Supreme Court decision allowing the prosecution of a defendant who causes the death of an unborn child as early as seven weeks into the pregnancy is an overwhelming victory for anti-abortionists and may prove to be a legal and moral setback for pro-abortionists.

The 6-1 decision gives California the distinction of being the most contradictory state: Long known as the late-term abortion capital, we have now ironically upheld the most protective fetal-murder law. Though the decision does nothing to interfere with the 1973 Roe vs. Wade abortion decision, it does make a powerful statement regarding the humanity of fetal life.

In Roe, abortion was protected under a fictional right to privacy. That decision effectively gave every woman the right to obtain an abortion throughout the entire nine months of her pregnancy. Since federal laws supersede state laws, all laws regulating abortion were immediately struck down; unborn babies were declared non-persons. Women were given sole discretion to decide whether their unborn children would live or die.

Since medicine in the 1970s was not as sophisticated and advanced as it is today, the fetus was thought to be merely a glob of tissue, an unviable parasite or a potential human who was not yet human. This sounds ridiculous in light of today’s knowledge regarding fetal development and the advancement in early fetal viability, yet a pro-abortion ethic must continue to maintain these views. Since the courts would never rule that one life could supersede another life, a large dose of intellectual dishonesty was called for, and the courts declared that the unborn were non-persons in the legal sense, therefore abortion was not the taking of a human life.

During the 1980s, however, Roe began to collapse from its own weight, and Monday’s decision declaring that the death of an unborn child caused through malice could result in the charge of murder turns the logic of Roe vs. Wade upside down. The law has twisted itself into a pretzel: One decision declares that the fetus is not a human being and hence can be legally destroyed; another holds that when a person other than the mother kills that same fetus, then that person can be charged with murder. If it’s murder, then the fetus must be human, and if it’s human, how can the courts allow its destruction through abortion?

This illogical legal mumbo-jumbo is what you get when a society seeks to justify laws that violate the sanctity of human life. Not only has the fetal-murder decision struck a blow for personhood, but this case also will be used to sensitize the American public to the desperate need to protect all human life.

We need this sensitivity training, for one look at our cities makes it painfully clear that the respect for human life has greatly eroded over the last 20 years. It is obvious that much of today’s violence and despair can be traced back to the legalization of abortion, for when one segment of our society loses its rights, then it’s only logical that the rest of society will follow. Today, immorality runs rampant, and if we don’t find a solid foundation on which to rebuild our beliefs and standards, then we will soon become a nation devoid of values. What foundation is greater than that which guarantees the protection of all human life, regardless of color, religion, condition, disability or gender?

California’s decision may result in the beginning of a new beginning. If we can legally declare that the fetus is human under one circumstance, then how long before we will legally redeclare that the fetus is human under all circumstances?