The criminal code of the District of Columbia, Section 22-1001, prohibits cruelty to animals…..

This statute explicitly covers “all living and sentient creatures, human beings excepted,” if a prosecutor can prove “serious bodily injury,” or if a prosecutor can prove “to an animal or indifference to animal life, that a single offense can be punished by up to five years in prison or a fine not to exceed $25,000 or both.”

If the legal definition of when one becomes a human being were to be adjusted so that a fetus is declared to be a legal person at some earlier stage of gestation, then the homicide laws would apply. As a necessary consequence, aborting fetal development anywhere in the potentially new adjusted period would be considered […]