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| photo credit: Wilhelm Joys Andersen / Flickr |
An important change in New York's RHA was a new definition of "person." By changing this definition, the state excluded viable unborn children from being considered legal "persons," thereby preventing them from being considered victims of homicide.
The new lawsuit alleges that changing this definition “escalates the threat of harm to women and unborn children and incentivizes deadly violence against women.” Christen Civeletto, one of the attorneys fighting against the RHA, said “New York has stripped women and their families of their ability to pursue justice for those deaths. That’s outrageous. In fact, it is contrary to the stated policy of the RHA itself: to affirm the ‘fundamental right [of women] to choose to carry the pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child.'”
The challenge “asks the court to acknowledge First Amendment rights for women whose unborn children are killed by assailants, to clarify dangerous ambiguities in the RHA that impact women, and to affirm existing, but previously unrecognized, rights for near-term unborn children and children who survive abortion.”
The lawsuit also challenges the fact that the RHA allows the abortion of viable preborn children. The RHA allows abortion through 24 weeks of pregnancy (which is already past the age of viability), but also allows exceptions for the benefit of the mother's broadly defined "health." This provision has been interpreted to include “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age,” essentially meaning that any abortion can be justified.
