"Indeed, in Alexander v. Whitman, the plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of the Wrongful Death and Survival Statute 98 as violating the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment because they deny a cause of action to the statutory beneficiaries unless a fetus survives past birth. The Third Circuit disagreed with the constitutional challenge and reiterated the lack of a duty to a fetus during the period in which it is “unborn”: Ms. Alexander can only establish a claim on behalf of her child under the Fourteenth Amendment if her child (and others similarly situated) fall(s) within the protections afforded “person[s]” as that term is used in the Fourteenth Amendment, and it is clear it does not. The Supreme Court has already decided that difficult question for us in Roe v. Wade. There, the Court expressly held that “the word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment does not include the unborn.” The Court held that “person” has “application only postnatally.” That constitutional principle was more recently re-affirmed in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. There, Justice Stevens, writing separately from the joint opinion of Justices O’Connor, Kennedy and Souter, wrote that, as a matter of federal constitutional law, a fetus is a “developing organism that is not yet a ‘person’ ” and “does not have what is sometimes described as a ‘right to life.’” This principle “remains a fundamental premise of our constitutional law governing reproductive autonomy."
Roe v. Wade

January 1, 1970

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pp.22-23

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade