Tag: Fetal personhood

Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin report on the frightening implications of fetal personhood.

Each year, six million women in the United States become pregnant. Approximately four million women go to term, one million have abortions, and nearly one million experience pregnancy losses, including thousands of stillbirths that occur after 28 weeks of pregnancy. All of these women are at risk when legislators attempt to establish a point in pregnancy when women may be deprived of their civil and human rights.

A stark but accurate way of putting it. If the pregnancy has civil and human rights then the woman who is pregnant loses them.

NAPW has fielded calls for help from women in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas who, late in their pregnancies, were threatened with court orders or other state action if they did not give up their rights to medical decision-making, bodily integrity, and health and submit to unnecessary cesarean surgery.

These are not idle threats. In fact, some women who have refused cesarean surgery or rejected advice to be hospitalized late in pregnancy have been taken prisoner and forced to submit to highly invasive medical and surgical procedures. The justifications for such actions have everything to do with the principles that would be established by laws banning abortions after 20 weeks. One Florida federal district court has already (wrongly) ruled that if states may outlaw abortion at some point during pregnancy and force a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, then surely the state can also force a woman to undergo major medical procedures to deliver the child she “affirmatively desires to have.”

Sure. Women get pregnant, therefore women should not have full human rights. It totally makes sense.

In an article published earlier this year in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, we document more than 400 cases involving the arrests and detentions of—and forced medical interventions on—pregnant women taking place between 1973 and 2005. Since 2005, we have documented more than 300 additional cases.

Our research finds little direct legal authority for these actions. Rather, prosecutors, hospital lawyers, and arresting officers rely on laws like the one being voted on next week in Albuquerque and those already passed in 13 states. They claim that if the state may protect the unborn by depriving pregnant women of their rights in the abortion context, consistency requires that pregnant women be deprived of their rights in all contexts, including birth and pregnancy loss.

These cases press home the need for abortion opponents and supporters alike to oppose these bans and secure society’s commitment to the fundamental principle: that a woman is a person with civil and human rights throughout her pregnancy. Before and after 20 weeks. Always.

Yes let’s agree on that.

There will be a fetal personhood amendment on the ballot in Colorado next year, RH Reality Check reports.

Personhood Colorado has tried three times to pass some kind of fetal “personhood” amendment in Colorado, which would effectively outlaw abortions. Those previous measures failed by a margin of 3 to 1 in 2008 and 2010, and did not receive enough valid signatures to appear on the 2012 ballot.

But this year it got enough valid signatures to get on the 2014 ballot.

The so-called Brady Amendment, or Amendment 67, was initiated by Heather Surovik, who was struck by a drunk driver when she was eight months pregnant. She lost her fetus, which she had planned to name Brady. Surovik writes on her website that she wanted Brady to be legally recognized as a person so that the driver could be prosecuted on homicide charges.

“Homicide is an act that can only be perpetrated against a person,” Cathy Alderman, vice president of public affairs at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, told RH Reality Check. “Once you define a fetus or embryo as a person, you pit the rights of a woman against her pregnancy. … We recognize that a pregnancy is part of a woman.”

If only everyone did.

Personhood USA is backing Amendment 67, and it is also appealing the 2012 ruling that its own personhood amendment did not have enough valid signatures, Personhood USA spokesperson Jennifer Mason told RH Reality Check.

Personhood USA’s amendment language specifically defines a “human being” as “a member of the species homo sapiens at any stage of development.” Amendment 67, on the other hand, has language about “protecting pregnant women and unborn children” which vaguely defines “unborn human beings” as a person or child.

“This amendment is unique because it recognizes the personhood of babies like Brady and doesn’t go out of its way to affirm abortion,” Mason said. When asked whether the amendment would affect access to safe abortion care, she said, “It’s a very interesting question before the legislature. … If babies in the womb are people who deserve protection, what’s the difference from other babies?”

Oh gee, yes it is interesting, especially for women who want to stop being pregnant.