The Law, Personhood, and Inconsistency

Many people are aware of the fact that most states will charge someone with two counts of manslaughter or homicide if they kill a pregnant woman. This obviously flies in the face of other laws which deny the personhood of the embryo/fetus.

Recently I found another example of this inconsistency within the law. It turns out that in most states someone who is “begotten” (conceived) before the death of their parent (obviously the father) is—for the sake of the father’s estate—treated as equally as a child who is born when the father dies. In other words, in terms of rights as an heir, an embryo has the same legal status as any other child. Hmm….