Aid for the Unborn

When is a child a child? Clergymen, physicians and legal experts have disagreed on the precise moment when an unborn fetus becomes an independent life. In its abortion decision last January, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a state may not protect a fetus until it becomes "viable," that is, after approximately seven months in the womb. In 18 states, however, authorities have decided that a pregnant woman can receive welfare payments for her unborn child, just as for any other child, because Congress specified that the Social Security Act was meant to encourage "continuing prenatal care and protection."

The Department of Health, Education and Welfare, however, has always considered such aid optional.

Now pregnant women in seven other states have brought suit to get these benefits. In four of the seven cases--Mississippi, Indiana, Iowa and Illinois --federal judges have ruled that the Act requires the state to provide aid for the unborn (judges in Georgia and New Jersey have ruled for the state, and Nebraska's case awaits a hearing).

Mississippi Attorney General A.F. Summer complained that "this certainly creates an anomaly. The time for payments has been moved backward from birth to conception. I hope they decide to stop there. If we have to begin with the gleam in the eye, who will do the counting and the certifying?" Summer is appealing the decision, as are the losers in all the other cases.

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