Is a fetus a person? An anti-abortion strategy says yes
The laws also open up questions well beyond abortion, about immigration and who is entitled to public benefits.
Even as roughly half the states have moved to enact near-total bans on abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, anti-abortion activists are pushing for a long-held and more absolute goal: laws that grant fetuses the same legal rights and protections as any person.
So-called fetal personhood laws would make abortion murder, ruling out all or most of the exceptions for abortion allowed in states that already ban it. So long as Roe established a constitutional right to abortion, such laws remained symbolic in the few states that managed to pass them. Now they are starting to have practical effect. Already in Georgia, a fetus now qualifies for tax credits and child support, and is to be included in population counts and redistricting.
The laws also open up questions well beyond abortion, about immigration and who is entitled to public benefits.
They have the potential to criminalize common health care procedures and limit the rights of a pregnant woman in making health care decisions.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision returning the regulation of abortion to the states has opened new interest in the laws, and a new legal path for them.
In Indiana, where this month the Republican-controlled Legislature banned abortion starting at conception, some conservative lawmakers objected that the law included exceptions for rape and incest. “This bill justifies the wicked, those murdering babies, and punishes the righteous, the preborn human being,” one lawmaker said.
In Georgia, a law granting fetal personhood to fetuses after around six weeks of pregnancy took effect after the overturning of Roe. But Georgia Right to Life and other conservative groups are petitioning Gov. Brian Kemp to call a special legislative session to pass a fetal personhood amendment to the state constitution. It would eliminate any exceptions for abortion allowed in the law, by declaring a “paramount right to life of all human beings as persons at any stage of development from fertilization to natural death.”
And this month, Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate introduced legislation that would establish a right to child support for fetuses beginning at conception. Such a mandate might be difficult to enforce but would nudge federal law toward an understanding that fetuses have the same right to life as other human beings, including the women who carry them.
The goal is to establish a federal ban on abortion.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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