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22 The Solicitor General offers a different explanation of the basis for the quickening rule, namely, that before quickening the common law did not regard a fetus “as having a ‘separate and independent existence.’ ” Brief for United States 26 (quoting Parker, 50 Mass., at 266). But the case on which the Solicitor General relies for this proposition also suggested that the criminal law’s quickening rule was out of step with the treatment of prenatal life in other areas of law, noting that “to many purposes, in reference to civil rights, an infant in ventre sa mere is regarded as a person in being.” Ibid. (citing 1 Blackstone 129); see also Evans, 49 N. Y., at 89; Mills v. Commonwealth, 13 Pa. 631, 633 (1850); Morrow v. Scott, 7 Ga. 535, 537 (1849); Hall v. Hancock, 32 Mass. 255, 258 (1834); Thellusson v. Woodford, 4 Ves. 227, 321–322, 31 Eng. Rep. 117, 163 (1789).

At any rate, the original ground for the quickening rule is of little importance for present purposes because the rule was abandoned in the 19th century. During that period, treatise writers and commentators criticized the quickening distinction as “neither in accordance with the result of medical experience, nor with the principles of the common law.” F. Wharton, Criminal Law §1220, p. 606 (rev. 4th ed. 1857) (footnotes omitted); see also J. Beck, Researches in Medicine and Medical Jurisprudence 26–28 (2d ed. 1835) (describing the quickening distinction as “absurd” and “injurious”). In 1803, the British Parliament made abortion