The Unborn Victims of Violence Act was strongly opposed by most pro-choice organizations, on grounds that the U.S. Supreme Court's "Roe v. Wade" decision said that the human fetus is not a "person" under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and that if the fetus were a Fourteenth Amendment "person," then they would have a constitutional right to life. However, the laws of 38 states also recognize the human fetus as the legal victim of homicide (and often, other violent crimes) during the entire period of prenatal development (27 states) or during part of the prenatal period (nine states). Legal challenges to these laws, arguing that they violate "Roe v. Wade" or other U.S. Supreme Court precedents, have been uniformly rejected by both the federal and the state courts, including the supreme courts of California, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota.