Born alive rule

U.S. courts have overturned this rule, citing recent advances in science and medicine, and in several states feticide statutes have been explicitly framed or amended to include fetuses in utero.

[1] The born alive rule was originally a principle at common law in England that was carried to the United States and other former colonies of the British Empire.

[7] As the Eliza Armstrong case shows, however, it was still legal for a father to sell his child as late as 1885, long after the slave trade had been abolished in England.

In the nineteenth century, some began to argue for legal recognition of the moment of conception as the beginning of a human being, basing their argument on growing awareness of the processes of pregnancy and fetal development.

[8] Examples of the evidence cited can be found within studies in ultrasonography, fetal heart monitoring, fetoscopy, and behavioral neuroscience.

Studies in Neonatal perception suggest that the physiology required for consciousness does not exist prior to the 28th week, as this is when the thalamic afferents begin to enter the cerebral cortex.

[1] They noted that English law allowed for alternative remedies in some cases, specifically those based on "unlawful act" and "gross negligence" manslaughter and other offenses which do not require intent to harm the victim (manslaughter in English law is capable of a sentence up to and including life imprisonment): "Lord Hope has, however, ... [directed]... attention to the foreseeability on the part of the accused that his act would create a risk ... All that it [sic] is needed, once causation is established, is an act creating a risk to anyone; and such a risk is obviously established in the case of any violent assault ...

The unlawful and dangerous act of B changed the maternal environment of the foetus in such a way that when born the child died when she would otherwise have lived.

The defendant must accept all the consequences of his act, so long as the jury are satisfied that he did what he did intentionally, that what he did was unlawful and that, applying the correct test, it was also dangerous.

For example, in the case St George's Healthcare NHS Trust v S; R v Collins & Ors, ex parte S[12] it was held a trespass to the person when a hospital terminated a pregnancy involuntarily because the mother was diagnosed with severe pre-eclampsia.

By a majority decision, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts held that a viable fetus constituted a "person" for the purposes of vehicular homicide law.

In the opinion of the justices, "We think that the better rule is that infliction of perinatal injuries resulting in the death of a viable fetus, before or after it is born, is homicide.