
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 26, 1994                   TAG: 9401260095
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

OKLA. COURT RULES FETUS A HUMAN LIFE

The long-term campaign to gain legal protection for fetuses gained significantly Tuesday as Oklahoma's highest court ruled that it is homicide to kill a fetus still in the womb but developed enough to live outside of it.

Since the point of "viability" is somewhere around 23 to 24 weeks, the unanimous decision by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals could mean criminal prosecutions for the death of fetuses that have reached the third trimester of pregnancy.

The Oklahoma tribunal, the highest court in that state for criminal cases, joined three other states in abandoning a legal rule once followed all across the nation: that a fetus must have been carried to term and be born as a live child, with a separate existence, before it is protected against either murder or manslaughter.

The Oklahoma court made clear that a homicide charge for killing a "viable" fetus cannot be made against a doctor who performs an abortion, or a pregnant woman who has the operation, because abortion is still the woman's constitutional right.

But, in what clearly was a victory for the fetal-rights movement, it declared: "A viable human fetus is nothing less than human life." So, it said, it was casting aside its long-standing "born alive" requirement for homicide prosecutions.

Its ruling came in the case of an Oklahoma City woman, Treva LaNan Hughes, who was convicted of first-degree manslaughter for the death in early August 1990 of a fetus that was due to be delivered four days later. Hughes, convicted also of drunken driving, drove her car into another driven by a pregnant woman, Reesa Poole.

Hughes was sentenced to eight years in prison for killing the fetus, but challenged her conviction and sentence, contending she was protected from the charge by the "born alive" theory that Oklahoma had long recognized.

Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.

by CNB