We the Very Small People

The Christian state of Florida is facing a moral dilemma in the wake of the Supreme Court's removal of women's right to bodily autonomy. A suspect in a homicide case was arrested when six weeks pregnant, and has been imprisoned without bail since last July. If one accepts the position that a foetus is a human being, this of course means that an unborn person has been subjected to arbitrary detention without having been lawfully charged with a crime or given any of the protections which are their right under due process. Whether sincerely or satirically, the woman's legal counsel is arguing precisely this, and has applied for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of the uterine lump. For some reason, the Christian state of Florida claims that the petition should be dismissed, thereby implicityly denying the ensoulment of the foetus until a rather late stage of incubation. It remains as yet unclear what sanctions will be imposed upon the Christian state of Florida should it persist in this doctrinal waywardness.