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Life, Heartbeat, Birth: A Medical Basis For Reform, David F. Forte

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article does not revisit the moral, legal, and constitutional critiques of the Court’s position [in Roe v. Wade]. The voluminous commentaries on the flaws in the Court’s opinions speak for themselves. Rather, this Article seeks to ground an expansion of the protection available to the unborn on the implicit principles underlying current Supreme Court doctrine, refined and modified by recent medical research on nature of pregnancy and human pre-natal development. It will argue that the State’s compelling interest in the protection of what the Court has called “potential life” ripens at an earlier point in time than what the …