Sunday, April 24, 2005

Ain't I a woman?

The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act defines "woman." A quick search of the U.S. Code turned up no prior definitions of the term, and although I thought it would have come up before in immigration rights cases, a brief Westlaw search similarly turns up nothing. Is this the first federal definition of "woman?"

FURTHER MUSING: after perusing the Act, I cannot see why was it not sufficient to say "pregnant person" instead of "woman." The limited utility of saving a word when referring to the individual to whom the mandatory disclosures must be made is surely outweighed by the massive insult of ensconcing in federal law a definition that tells vast numbers of women that they aren't women.
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