Justice Alito Voices Support for Fetal Rights in Federal Law

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito seemed to fully endorse the argument that fetuses have full rights as people, at least under one federal law.

During arguments Wednesday in a case that pits Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion against a federal law that requires hospitals to provide emergency health care, the conservative justice zeroed in on the statute’s reference to “unborn child” and, as he put it, their “potential interests.”

“It seems that the plain meaning is that the hospital must try to eliminate any immediate threat to the child but performing abortion is antithetical to that duty,” Alito said of ...