On July 15, the Thomas More Society filed an amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court of Rhode Island in a lawsuit against former Governor Gina Raimondo and her administration. Within the brief, the law firm argued the rights of voters and preborn children were violated by Rhode Island’s 2019 Reproductive Privacy Act.
As Live Action News has previously reported, the bill allows for abortions throughout all nine months of pregnancy even if Roe v. Wade is overturned. In addition, the act overturned a statute that made it possible to charge an assailant who with fetal homicide if the perpetrator attacks a pregnant woman and kills her preborn child.
According to the Thomas More Society, Rhode Islanders were deprived of the constitutional right to even vote on such a measure. In contrast, the preborn were denied an even greater right: their legal rights as persons. As the nonprofit law firm stated on its website, this filing will support the “personhood rights of preborn children” and the “rights of eligible Rhode Island voters who would have voted against a constitutional amendment recognizing the right of abortion had it been put before an electorate.”
READ: Rhode Island abortion law allows babies to be killed up to birth for life or ‘health’ of mother
In an interview with Live Action News, Thomas Olp, Vice President and Senior Counsel at the Thomas More Society, explained the flaws behind the 2019 act and the purpose in filing the brief.
“It would be in a pro-life interest to have courts recognize that unborn human beings are persons, even if Roe v. Wade says they’re not a person under the Fourteenth Amendment,” Olp said. “Now, we say, the only thing that Roe v. Wade said is – the contest between a mother and her baby – the mother trumps the interests of the unborn child, right?”
He added, “And so if we narrow Roe v. Wade to that context, in the fetal homicide area, for example, the quick child law area, there’s no such pitting of interest – the interest of the mother and the interest of the fetus are identical – so why wouldn’t a court be able to recognize the interest of that unborn child?”
Since fetal homicide laws grant preborn children “protectable interests under law,” Olp said, idealogues like the ones behind bills like the Reproductive Privacy Act are trying to undo them. “It’s just striking to me what a different worldview it was before Roe v. Wade in terms of how an unborn child was looked at in the law. And I would say it’s a mark of how degraded our society has become in terms of protecting the voiceless, the victims of the world – the people who have no voice. Isn’t that the measure of law?”
Olp went on to say how the purpose of the legal system is to “recognize and protect the dignity of human beings,” instead of permitting their humanity to be “scapegoated” for other ideological purposes.
Hopefully, the law firm’s brief will draw attention to the need to restore the legal protections that preborn children once had as human beings.
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