Scott
Puritan Board Graduate
A legal opinion of Sir Edward Coke in an old English common law case discussing the common law status of an unborn child stated the following:
Thoughts?
So, according to old English common law, the victim's status at the time of death determines the crime, and not the victim's status at the time of the injury.if a woman be quick with childe, and by a potion or otherwise killeth it in her wombe, or if a man beat her, whereby the childe dyeth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead childe, this is a great misprision, and no murder; but if the childe be born alive and dyeth of the potion, battery, or other cause, this is murder; for in law it is accounted a reasonable creature, in rerum natura, when it is born alive.
Thoughts?