Commonwealth v. Bullock

OPINION

Justice SAYLOR.

This case primarily concerns the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s fetal homicide statute; it additionally entails a challenge to jury instructions given at Appellant’s trial, where he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter of an unborn child.

I

In the late 1990s, Pennsylvania’s General Assembly enacted the Crimes Against the Unborn Child Act.1 The Act added Chapter 26 to the Pennsylvania Crimes Code, which created several new offenses designed to protect unborn children from unlawful injury or death. Under the Act, an individual commits criminal homicide of an unborn…