PREGNANCY - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

PREGNANCYAuthored

The Law Mind • 1011 words

Definition

The physiological condition of a female who carries within her body a fecundated ovum or developing fetus. In law, pregnancy is relevant across multiple doctrines and procedural contexts:

Criminal procedure: A female defendant who has been capitally convicted may plead pregnancy in stay of execution. The plea does not affect the judgment itself but operates as a respite — a delay of the execution — until she is delivered.

Evidence and succession: Pregnancy may be the subject of legal inquiry where a widow is alleged to be with child by her deceased husband, affecting inheritance rights and the interests of presumptive heirs. A writ de ventre inspiciendo historically lay to compel physical examination to determine whether pregnancy existed.

Modern employment and civil rights law: Pregnancy is a protected condition under federal and state anti-discrimination statutes, most notably the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (1978), which amended Title VII to prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.

Medical jurisprudence: The term encompasses normal intrauterine pregnancy as well as ectopic or extra-uterine pregnancy — development of the ovum outside the uterine cavity, as in the Fallopian tubes or ovary — which historically terminated by rupture and was a recognized cause of death requiring medicolegal inquiry.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The condition of being pregnant; an instance of this. The period of time this condition prevails. The progression of stages from conception to birth.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The condition of being pregnant; the state of being with young. Figuratively: the quality of being heavy with important contents, issue, significance, or capacity; fertility.

The common meaning and the legal meaning largely overlap in their biological core. The gap lies in what law adds: pregnancy in legal sources is not merely a physiological state but a trigger for specific procedural rights, succession inquiries, and — in modern law — anti-discrimination protections. Historical sources also treat pregnancy as a forensic category requiring verification, which the common definition does not contemplate.

Recognized Forms

/SUBTYPES

Intrauterine pregnancy: Normal development of the fertilized ovum within the uterine cavity. The default legal and medical referent when the term is used without qualification.

Extra-uterine (ectopic) pregnancy: Development of the ovum outside the uterine cavity. Bouvier's specifically notes this subtype and its typical termination by rupture and hemorrhage, marking it as a distinct medicolegal category relevant to inquests and cause-of-death determinations.

Pretended (feigned) pregnancy: A historical category in which a widow falsely claimed pregnancy to produce a supposititious heir — a fictitious or substituted child — and thereby affect succession to a decedent's estate. The legal response was the writ de ventre inspiciendo.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers must understand that the legal significance of pregnancy has shifted dramatically across time, and conflating historical and modern treatments will produce errors.

In historical sources through the nineteenth century, pregnancy appears almost exclusively in two contexts: capital punishment procedure (the plea in stay of execution) and succession/inheritance (feigned pregnancy and the writ de ventre inspiciendo). Neither context has substantial modern application, though both appear extensively in older case law and treatises.

Modern legal treatment of pregnancy centers on anti-discrimination law — an entire body of doctrine absent from all historical dictionaries in this corpus. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, state analogs, the Americans with Disabilities Act as applied to pregnancy-related conditions, and the more recent PUMP Act and Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (2023) represent the live research terrain. Researchers using historical dictionaries alone will find no trace of this framework.

The medicolegal subtype of ectopic pregnancy appears in Bouvier's in a forensic context relevant to nineteenth-century inquest practice. Modern forensic pathology has substantially expanded this area, but the historical dictionary treatment is thin and should be supplemented with medical jurisprudence treatises.

Corpus researchers should also note the connection between pregnancy and capacity or competency inquiries in historical sources — feigned pregnancy was treated as a form of fraud on succession, with the writ de ventre inspiciendo as the procedural remedy. This writ is now obsolete in virtually all common law jurisdictions but appears throughout pre-twentieth-century case law and requires contextual understanding.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary both define pregnancy in terms of its medical jurisprudence significance — the fecundated germ developing within the womb — and both treat the plea of pregnancy in capital cases as the primary legal application. Their definitions are substantively consistent and draw on contemporary medical dictionaries (Dunglison, Billings) for clinical precision, reflecting the period's practice of grounding legal definitions in forensic medicine.

Bouvier's adds meaningful content by addressing pretended pregnancy and the writ de ventre inspiciendo with procedural specificity: the sheriff's command, examination by twelve matrons in the presence of twelve knights. This is the most detailed historical treatment in the corpus and is the appropriate starting point for researchers tracing the law of supposititious heirs or the writ itself.

Neither Anderson's nor the first edition of Black's offers a direct pregnancy entry in the extracted material. Anderson's misrouted entry (covering preference in debtor-creditor law) is an artifact of the source extraction and contains no relevant content.

What the historical dictionaries miss entirely: any treatment of pregnancy in employment law, civil rights, disability accommodation, or reproductive rights — all of which define the term's primary legal significance in contemporary practice.

Jurisdictional Note

Federal law (Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Pregnant Workers Fairness Act) sets a floor for pregnancy-related employment protections, but many states provide broader protections under their own human rights or fair employment statutes. In succession and family law, state law governs almost entirely, and the historical writs and procedures documented in Bouvier's were common law mechanisms that were absorbed into, modified by, or abolished through state statutory schemes at different times.

PREGNANCYmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

PREMIER SERJEANT, ETC. mission is made "without prejudice," or a motion is denied "without prejudice," it is meant as a declaration that no rights or privileges of the party concerned are to be considered as thereby waived or lost, except in so far as may be expressly conceded or de- cided.

PREGNANCYmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

In medical jurisprudence. The state of a female who has within her ovary or womb a fecundated germ, which gradually becomes developed in the latter receptacle. Dungl. Med. Dict. —Pregnancy, plea of. A plea which a woman capitally convicted may plead in stay of execution; for this, though it is no stay of judgment, yet operates as a respite of execution until she is delivered. Brown.

PREGNANCYmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

Preference. A payment to one creditor which will or, possibly, may give him an advantage over others.1 In the absence of a bankrupt law, a failing debtor may prefer one creditor to another by a deed, a judgment, or other means, except, in some States, by an assignment in trust. The effect may be to delay a creditor not preferred, in fact to prevent his obtaining payment at all; but if the honest intent was to pay the preferred debt, the transaction is not invalidated by the statute of 13 Elizabeth. That statute is aimed at intended fraud, - at transfers of property or preferences which are not bona fide, but collusive arrangements " to delay, hinder, or defraud" particular creditors.2 Being with child. Existing at the time of marriage by another than the husband, is ground for divorce, provided the husband was without knowledge of the woman's condi. tion, either from her confession or appearance.s 1 [Re Hapgood, 2 Low. 202 (1873), Lowell, J. 2 York County Bank v. Carter, 38 Pa. 453 (1861), Strong, J.; Worman v. Wolfersberger, 19 id. 61 (1852); Smith v. Craft, 11 Biss. 347 (1852); Clarke v. White, 12 Pet. 200 (1836); Lucas v. Claflin, 76 Va. 276-79 (1882), cases; Tootle v. Coldwell, 30 Kan. 134 (1883), cases; Jewett v. Noteware, 30 Hun, 194 (1883), cases; Sartwell v. North, 144 Mass. 192-95 (1887), cases; 48 Ala. 376; 10 Cal. 277; 19 id. 46; 4 Del. Ch. 536; 4 B. Mon. 296; 13 R. I. 463; Bump, Fraud. Conv. 220, cases. 3 Brown v. Jefferson County Bank, 19 Blatch. 316-17 (1881), Blatchford, J.; Wilson v. City Bank of St. Paul, 17 Wall. 483-87 (1873), Miller, J.; Jewell v. Knight, 123 U. S. 434 (1887), cases. 4 Campbell v. Colorado Coal & Iron Co., 9 Col. 64-65 (1885), cases. As to assignments with preferences, see Woonsocket Rubber Co. v. Falley, 30 F. R. 808, 811-12 (1887), cases; Weil v. Polack, ib. 813 (1887), cases. 5 See Hoffman v. Hoffman, 30 Pa. 417, 421 (1858); Baker v. Baker, 13 Cal. 87, 92-106 (1859), cases; Reynolds v. Reynolds, 3 Allen, 609 (1862); Leavitt v. Leavitt, 13 Mich. 452 (1865); Foss v. Foss, 12 Allen, 26 (1866); Crehore v. Crehore, 99 Mass. 330 (1867); Hedden v. Hedden, 21 N. J. E. 61 (1870); Farrv. Farr, 2 McArthur, 35 (1875); Allen's Appeal, 99 Pa. 196 (1882); State v. Shoemaker, 62 Iowa, 344 (1884); Sissung v. Sissung, Sup. Ct. Mich. (1887), cases; 18 Cent. Law J. 115-16 cence.2 A man cannot be "prejudiced" against another without being "biased" against him; but he may be biased without being prejudiced.2 Implies nearly the same thing as opinion; a prejudgment of the case, and not necessarily enmity or ill-will against a party. A statute excluding as a juror a person who has "formed or expressed an opinion, or is insensible of any bias or prejudice," intends to exclude any person who has made up his mind, or formed a judgment in advance. Yet, the opinion or judgment must be something more than a vague impression, formed from casual conversations with others, or from reading imperfect newspaper reports. The opinion must be upon the merits of the question, and be such as would be likely to bias or prevent a candid judgment, upon a full hearing of the evidence. If one has formed what in some sense might be called an opinion, but which yet falls short of exciting any bias or prejudice, he may consistently discharge his duty as a juror. The right to a trial by an impartial jury does not mean that the jurors must have no prejudice or opinion as to the policy of enforcing the laws. See further BIAS; IMPARTIAL, 1; OΟΡΙΝΙΟΝ, 2. The "prejudice" in the mind of a judge which will afford ground for a change of venue refers to an opinion in regard to the case, formed beforehand, without examination, or a prepossession; not, an opinion on the questions of law involved; prejudice against the party personally. Without prejudice. That what is said or done is not (1) to be construed as an admission of liability, or (2) to affect the rights (1884), cases; 1 Bish. Mar. & D. §§ 179-91, cases; 44 Am. R. 112, cases. 1 Eckhardt v. People, 83 N. Y. 464 (1881). 2 Willis v. State, 12 Ga. 448-50 (1853), Nisbet, J. 3 Commonwealth v. Webster, 5 Cush. 297 (1850), Shaw, C. J. United States v. Noelke, 17 Blatch. 562-63 (1880), cases, Choate, J.; 2 McCrary, 257. * Hungerford v. Cushing, 2 Wis. *405 (1853), Whiton, Chief Justice. • Wheeler v. Lawson, 57 Wis. 402 (1883). (51)

PREGNANCYn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

The condition of being pregnant; the state of being with young. Figuratively: The quality of being heavy with important contents, issue, significance, etc.; unusual consequence or capacity; fertility. Fuller.

pregnancynoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

The condition of being pregnant; an instance of this. | The period of time this condition prevails. | The progression of stages from conception to birth.

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