But it is my opinion that this is inevitably a public policy issue, given that even complete government non-involvement is still a form of policy.

no, I was just counting.

If however, the pointing out to the obvious imbalance in gender distribution (which is completely unrelated to the complexity of the topic) caused psychological harm to anyone, I am truly apologizing.

Imagine if I were (hypothetically) to say the same thing to you about any other subject. Would you find that offensive?

Mensch - I think you better stick out of this precedence, incidence, individual case, personal decision debate, cause it may be indeed a bit too complex to get a solution for here on this platform (which mainly consists of members of only one “subset” of humans - so much to the diversity on this blog) . The least of all solutions, however, is to change your amendments - there are other issues of more public relevance (as opposed to the cases you presented here - as I said, all individual cases, where the local jurisdictions can work on pretty well without changing the whole consitution) that need to be addressed before you foolishly start to define “life” via your constitution.

-It is the government’s position that a foetus is alive, and therefore killing it is murder.

-It is the government’s position that abortion is legal, and serves as an exception to this rule.

-Similar exceptions include thing like killing in self defense or capital punishment, each of which are cases in which you are allowed to kill someone who is alive and have it not be murder (or at least, not be prosecuted for it).

-I suspect that, if a woman was attacked and the foetus was killed, she would not have the option of declining to press charges for that death- rather, the state would press murder charges regardless of her decision.

More here:

States That Have Not Enacted Bans

California

Colorado (ballot initiative defeated)
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Maine (ballot initiative defeated)
Maryland
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Nevada
New Hampshire
New York
North Carolina
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Texas
Vermont
Washington (ballot initiative defeated)
Wyoming

California, the state in which Scott Peterson resided, has a ban on late-term abortions, with an exception for cases where continuing the pregnancy would be a threat to the woman’s “life and health”.

“If anything, this is an attempt to restore the definition of life into the hands of the people away from the government.”

I thought you believed in democracy? Isn’t part of that the idea of democracy that the government is of the people?

“I’m also surprised to see you express distrust of government when you blithely accept its role in redistributing wealth.”

Which demonstrates more trust of the government - suggesting the implementation of an accountable system of wealth redistribution fully overseen by the representatives of the people, or advocating a program allowing the government to spy on its own citizens?

1. No he didn’t.

2. You are wrong.

Darwin already demonstrated this to be false.

“Had the mother not been murder but elected to undergo a late term abortion she would not have been charged with homicide.”

I was under the impression that you can’t just ‘elect’ to undergo a late term abortion - that it was only permissible if you can demonstrate that continuing the pregnancy would be hazardous to the woman’s health. Even then, isn’t there an exception for babies that are ‘viable’ in terms of having the ability to survive with medical assistance outside of the mother, which the baby in that case might have had?

The trimester system does most of the work you want done. Admittedly, the way it happened set a bad precedent, but I think the mechanism you are suggesting to reach a very similar end is a lot less likely to ever succeed.