Is there any branch of the law, where a foetus is given legal personality separate to that of the mother?

Question

If the rights or wrongs of abortion are a judicial matter rather than political, central to it would seem to be the question of what defines a "person".

Critical to the idea that abortion should be illegal seems to be that a foetus is defined as a person, and is entitled to all the rights etc as such.

Civil law (including commercial law, in the United States and all English-speaking jurisdictions) has its own definitions of persona which is in some ways more extensive and in others less so than in criminal law. For example legally constituted companies, or governmental bodies etc have legal personality and can sue or be sued.

But is there ANY branch of the law, in any country of which subscribers may be aware - where a foetus is given legal personality separate to that of the mother?

For example, I could leave money in my will to my 5 year-old granddaughter, and, should she not survive me, - to "any of her ( currently unborn) issue". That would not mean that the unborn issue at the time of writing the will had legal personality - but they would acquire it at birth. But is there any country where they might acquire it at e.g. conception? The question is not as irrelevant as it might sound, since if a foetus, for example, inherited money, but did not survive birth - would the money in question become part of a separate estate in their name, and dealt with appropriately, under laws of intestacy. Does anyone know of any country where that, for example, might be the case?

Answer 1

The law isn’t just concerned with people

Animal welfare laws, for example, impose obligations on people to do or refrain from doing things for the benefit of animals who are clearly not people.

Pro- or anti-abortion law could be made with or without recognising a foetus as a person.

Example of laws that give legal status to a foetus

In queensland you can murder a foetus.

Answer 2

The American Convention on Human Rights Art. 4(1) says that

Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.

States also have distinct "fetal murder" statutes such as Washington's RCW 9A.32.060 which prohibits

intentionally and unlawfully kill[ing] an unborn quick child by inflicting any injury upon the mother of such child.

While the law does not declare a fetus to be a person, it treats a fetus as more person-like than for example a dog (dogslaughter is a civil matter). Under Texas Penal Code 19.03(8), capital murder includes murdering an individual under 10 years of age, where "individual" is defined in Penal Code §1.07(26) as "a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth". The word "person" is not used, instead "individual" is substituted (and also includes people who are already born).

Art. 6 para 2 of the Norwegian Constitution (pertaining to royal succession) states that

An unborn child shall also be included among those entitled to the succession and shall immediately take her or his proper place in the line of succession as soon as she or he is born into the world

however this proviso does not say "person" (which is the Norwegian word for 'person', but I can't swear that in legal contexts the word is used the same as it is in).

This page gathers together pertinent instances of legal person-like treatment of fetuses. The difficulty lies in concluding that a particular advantageous position of a fetus is because of their "person" status. There are a number of conjectured future developments of the idea of fetal personhood discussed here which also refers to has treatments of a fetus as a person in light of child-endangerment laws.