#infocorner

I will begin with a quick explanation since it doesn't fit nicely below: Common law is a type of legal system which evolves through the decisions of judges in courts (this is what the term precedent refers to).  Common law has formed the basis of the United Kingdom's judicial system for roughly one thousand years, and was utilized in designing the American judicial system during the country's creation.  In comparison, most of mainland Europe and South America uses an alternative law system called "civil law".  But I won't get into that, if you know it that's great and if you don't, maybe I'll do a more in depth compare/contrast post.  When America laid out the Bill of Rights and other founding principles, they reshaped the existing principles of common law, removing certain permissions it granted (like general search warrants) but retaining the main idea of basing verdicts in precedent, along with a wide array of other ideals which manifested themselves in various laws, or lack thereof.  During mid to late 19th century, the United States began to move further away from the traditional regulations of common law.  This was due to American courts developing their own principles instead of relying on British precedent. 

Now on to the fun part you've all been waiting for.  Between this period of change in legal process and the decision of Roe v. Wade (1973), if a woman's unborn child became a victim of feticide due to a violent crime such as Assault and Battery, the defendant would be charged essentially with giving the woman an abortion, instead of the common law standard.  During this period, abortion was considered a felony in as many as 30 US states, and available upon request in only 4 (WA, AK, HI, NY) in the years leading up to Roe, and considered legal in the case of certain restrictions in several others, much like how contemporary state abortion laws vary.  

Alternatively to this American-born method of dealing with feticide, the statutes and precedents of common law which the US moved away from provided no feticide protections to unborn humans (this dates back to 1115 CE) - it required that for true "homicide" to have occurred, the being must have breathed on it's own.  While common law mandated that abortion was illegal any time after the movement of the fetus is first felt felt by the mother, like feticide it was not considered murder.  Feticide, and by extension abortion, was viewed as not-quite-murder and punished accordingly; people charged with it were traditionally punished with 10 years' penance (essentially the convicted would pray for forgiveness from God for 10 years), a fraction of the punishment handed out for "true" or "full" homicides.  The not-quite-murder idea stems from the concept that in order to be a murder victim, one must have been "a reasonable creature, in rerum natura, and in the King's peace".  This simply means a being which could be reasoned with, or was capable of critical thought (assumed to be exclusively a human, or I suppose it could be some unknown creature of equal intelligence) which exists in the natural, physical world we live in (rerum natura) and interact with daily who was on good terms with the King.  As interpreted in the 1500s, for something to be considered part of the natural world, it must be "completely expelled" from the mother's womb.  As for the King's peace, that just means killing criminals or other enemies of the state would not count as murder, since the King didn't protect them.  But now let's look at the state of feticide...

Currently in 2014, 21 states unconditionally recognize the "unborn child", or fetus, as a homicide victim in non-abortion fetal death, and 25 states recognize that fatal injury to a fetus may be punishable no matter the stage of prenatal development.  12 states have policy that varies based on the age of the fetus, and some states like California treat feticide as homicide, but allow the destruction of human embryos; this distinction is hugely important to the still-growing embryonic stem-cell industry, though in California it was not a result of their direct action (People v. Davis 1994). 

As far as I can tell, these laws do not qualify legally induced abortions as feticide, as there are many states which both punish the murder of a fetus like they would any other kind of homicide and also allow requested abortions (there are some states which outlaw both, however, and may utilize dual-functioning laws which outlaw abortion on the premise of it being a form of feticide).  In 2004, President Bush signed and brought into effect the only federal law which specifically recognizes any unborn human child, regardless of development stage, as a possible victim of 68 different federally recognized violent crimes, including charges of terrorism and violence within the military or other federal jurisdictions. 

An important distinction I would like to make is the difference between an embryo and a fetus.  Fetal stage is generally recognized around the 11th gestational week, which is about nine weeks after fertilization.  Beyond humans, in order to apply the word fetus to prenatal development, the species must be a type of viviparous vertebrate, or animals which have spinal cords and carry an embryo to term and give live birth instead of laying eggs.  These are typically a kind of mammal, but a handful of other species which don't use placental development qualify as well.  These are the technical factors that define a "fetus", however; biologically, there is just as much of a transition between embryo and fetus as there is from your 30th to 31st birthday.  While it's easy to spot differences that occurred before and will occur after, there is not a recognized demarcation line in the physical development of the embryo into a fetus, scientific or otherwise, of which I am aware.  The term "fetus" typically suggests that the embryo has progressed to a point where it's species is recognizable (if you don't understand this, I have a video for you), but this is still fairly subjective and can vary.  Also, in my readings I found a general consensus - while a fetus has the potential to survive outside the womb with artificial aid, an embryo would perish even with the best of modern medicine aiding it in just a transplant, never mind any extended time spent developing.  Understanding the difference between the a fetus and embryo is important in any discussion involving one or the other, be it about embryonic stem cell research or the abortion at different prenatal development stages.  Brain activity has been observed in embryos around six weeks after fertilization, and this activity is typically accompanied by the embryo's first detectable heartbeats.  Among other developments that progress to what I would call the "definitive fetal stage", classically hallmarked by the mother's surprise when she first feels the baby "kick", these are key concepts in the philosophical and ethical controversy of determining when exactly the former zygote deserves full human rights.  The stage I skip, which Wikipedia claims is a fetal stage, involves the beginning development of neural pathways, evidenced by "uncontrolled movements and twitches" as those pathways create new connections between the brain and various developing muscle groups.  Does the heartbeat show life?  There was a time when human's pronounced death when no heartbeat could be found; however, we now know that it takes 20-40 seconds for brain activity to cease.  Both of these definitions can potentially be related and require further debate and study, and hopefully you can take what I've shared with you (I tried to be non-bias, I think) and form your OWN opinion, maybe even with some further research.  Once you have that, read my more personal thoughts below: