It said this included fetuses that doctors expected to be sustained by respirators.

But she thinks that drug delivery is too narrow a charge, and instead favors a statutory broadening of criminal child abuse to include fetuses.

This protection would include fetuses and embryos, persons who cannot communicate their wishes due to physical or mental incapacitation, and those who are too weak to resist being euthanized.

In 2003, Perry signed the Prenatal Protection Act, which explicitly included fetuses in its definition of human life.

For instance, he voted in 1984 to define "person" under discrimination laws to include fetuses.

Attempted murder charges against her were dropped since the Criminal Code of Canada definition of "human being" doesn't include fetuses.

"They may say it's an oversight, but any legislator who was there in 1983, when they amended the statute to include fetuses, ought to have known," said Ms. Benshoof.

This policy of prevention supports a reading of the word 'person' to include viable fetuses.

Some legislatures have simply expanded their existing offences to explicitly include fetuses in utero.

One section includes several fetuses in various stages of development.