South African Law/Persons/Unborn child

Under Ethiopian Law a child merly concieved may be considered born for certain legal purposes provided it's interest so requires and is born alive and viable(Art. 2 of the 1960 Civil code). The requirments that the merly conceived child's interest requires and it be born alive and viable are cummulative all the time. Its interest is said to be involved if for example, the father of the baby dies while still conceived and the succession of the deceased is opened and other heirs are to take it with out the conceived child's participation. In this case the child is said to be a double loser in a sense he lost his father and, if he is to be excluded from the succession only be cause he in to be a person yet. So to protect the interest of the conceived child from the regours of the principle that only birth gives rise to personality, this exception has be devised by the law. The other requirments are concomitant to one an other: namely birth and viability. For the purpose of birth the child must be born alive and of course it is a prerequisite for the requirment of viability for we cannot talk about viability of a child born with out life. Article 4 of the Civil Code provides the meaning of what viability for the purpose of Art. 2 of the Civil Code. Accordingly, viability is the ability of the child to sustain life for 48 hours after birth. The law says a child is viable if it lived for 48 hours after birth(Art.4/1). And viability of a child who lived for 48 hours is irribattable, meaning no contrary proof is allowed. This even so if the life of the child was supported with an external mechanism with out which it couldn't survive for more than 4 hours, let say due to some desease it has contracted while in the womb. On the other hand if a child dies due to a cause other than its internal constitution, ie due to external factors example the child suffered a head fructure due to an error by the nurse, or it was saffocated due to lack of ventlation or other causes that it might suffer in the hands of any one or causes not attributable to any desease he might have contracted while in the womb.