Here is Craddock's fetal personhood argument in a nutshell:
A constitutional scholar seeking to establish an originalist interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment must ascertain the meaning of the words at the time the Amendment was written and ratified. One might look to dictionaries of legal and common usage, the context of the English common law tradition, and cases that attempted to construe the meaning of the text in a manner consistent with original meaning. Using this methodology, it is reasonable to construe the Fourteenth Amendment to include prenatal life.
The structure of the argument is simple: The Fourteenth Amendment's use of the word "person" guarantees due process and equal protection to all members of the human species. The preborn are members of the human species from the moment of fertilization. Therefore, the Fourteenth Amendment protects the preborn. If one concedes the minor premise (that preborn humans are members of the human species), all that must be demonstrated is that the the term "person," in its original public meaning at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment's adoption, applied to all members of the human species.
The minor premise need not be lingered upon here. Nevertheless, we should observe that whether states historically believed that the preborn specifically were members of the human species is not dispositive, so long as they believed all human beings were entitled to protection under the Fourteenth
Amendment. Just as "freedom of speech" protects movies and internet communication under an originalist interpretation even though those technologies did not exist at the time of the First Amendment's adoption, "person" protects every member of the human species, regardless of whether individuals were recognized as members of the human family at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment's adoption.
What are your thoughts?
