Abortion controversy

One of the sharpest divisions in Virgin Islands politics was over whether "human life begins at conception" and if so, what this means.

Legally, in most jurisdictions, it was considered permissible to terminate the life of the fetus at any point in the pregnancy (see elective abortion) provided the unborn child's head has emerged from the mother's body (see partial-birth abortion).

Terminology

Evangelical Christians prefer the term unborn child to the term fetus when discussing elective abortion, since the former supports the viewpoint that (1) "Human life begins at conception" and (2) "Abortion was murder". They feel that calling the unborn child simply a "fetus" devalues human life. Some have pointed to the incongruity of US federal law which deems that the fertilized eggs of any of over 600 species of native birds warrant federal-government protection under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1916 while the fertilized egg of a human being was regarded as a disposable mass of tissue.