Justice Allison Riggs (together with the NC Democrat Party, the super PAC Family First, and Justice Project Action) have been filling my mailbox and texts with an absurd analysis of the positions of her opponent, Judge Jefferson Griffin. She claims that he is against contraception, IVF, and abortion with no exceptions at all. He has not taken any of these positions. What is behind this?
In a civil case, Judge Griffin concurred in an opinion that stated human life begins at conception.
One of the most basic distinctions in North Carolina law is that the treatment of civil cases and criminal cases are very different (NC General Statutes 1-4.5 and 6). Justice Riggs missed that class. Let me explain:
In 1859, the American Medical Association unanimously adopted a resolution “condemning abortion at every period of gestation, except as necessary to preserve the life of mother or child.” The stated reason was the increasing frequency “of such unwarrantable destruction of human life.”
The common law, as of 1776 (and probably as of 1669) in North Carolina made abortion a crime from conception. “The moment the womb is instinct with embryo life and gestation has begun . . .” the crime may be committed, State v. Slagle (1880) and G.S. 4-1.
These “facts of life” have been well known for two centuries. The very first two sentences of The Developing Human — Clinically Oriented Embryology (2nd ed 1977) by Keith Moore states:
“Development is a continuous process that begins when an oocyte (ovum) is fertilized by a spermatozoon and ends at death. It is a process of growth and differentiation which transforms the zygote, a single cell, into a multicellular adult human being.”
No new science has changed that science in the last 47 years. Even after Roe v. Wade (1973) most abortionists will admit that after conception the embryo and fetus are living human beings. I have publicly debated two abortionists and deposed two others under oath. They said, of course, they are dealing with a living human being.
Only politicians and the press deny this obvious fact of life.
The law caught up with science in the 19th century. By 1868, the vast majority of states criminalized abortion at all stages of pregnancy. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (2022) lists several dozen statutes from the mid 19th century. Many of the state court decisions from the mid to late 19th through the early 20th century made the point that these protective laws were motivated by a sincere belief that abortion kills a human being. Thirteen United States territories that later became states criminalized abortion at all stages of pregnancy between 1850 (Hawaii) and 1919 (New Mexico). By the end of the 1950s, all but four states and the District of Columbia prohibited abortion, unless performed to save or to preserve the life of the mother.
But how does NC law treat unborn children in civil cases?
The law of North Carolina was and is that the property of one dying without a will immediately vests in an unborn child. In 1823, a North Carolina statute clarified: “[n]o inheritance shall descend to any person, unless such person shall be in life at the death of the person last seized, or shall be born within ten months after the death of the person last seized.”
Ten lunar months are 280 days. By 1839 a child, once conceived, could take property under a will to “children.” In 1854 North Carolina statutes clarified that “[a]n infant unborn . . . shall be deemed a person capable of taking by deed as if he were born.”
Until Roe v. Wade (1973), for all purposes beneficial to her, the preborn child was protected by the civil law and the criminal law of almost all of the nation. Law and biology were consistent and considered the child in the womb to be within the protection of law from conception. Since 1967, North Carolina law has allowed the abortion of these living human beings by doctors — currently up to the 12th week of pregnancy. No criminal penalties are attached.
Justice Riggs uses her disregard of the difference between civil law and criminal law to try to get hired for another eight years as one of the state’s top jurists.
Meanwhile she advertises that her view is that there should be no legal protections for unborn children. This issue is pending in two federal courts sitting in North Carolina, so, according to the Standards of Judicial Conduct, Riggs should not be commenting on how she might rule.