A FRINGE IDEA COULD BE THE NEXT POST-ROE V. WADE CHAPTER

A pregnant woman walks into an emergency room experiencing a miscarriage, or she gives birth to a stillborn. Someone becomes suspicious and notifies police. They want to know: Is the woman at fault? Did she take any drugs or medication? Did she research abortions on the internet?

A “pro-life” prosecutor decides to make her a pariah. She might face criminal charges, child endangerment or, worst-case scenario, manslaughter or murder if prosecutors believe she intended to end her pregnancy.

This is a dystopian scenario — what could happen if anti-abortion zealots take their positions to an extreme. And it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Abortion rights groups fear the next frontier in the fight to take away reproductive rights is to grant fetuses “personhood” status. Anti-abortion groups such as Americans United for Life are pushing for a federal executive order that would recognize “preborn persons as constitutional ‘persons’” entitled to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida recently introduced the ”Unborn Child Support Act, ” which would grant child support payments to women “at any stage of development” of a pregnancy. The legislation appears to be a way to make fetal personhood more palatable to Americans.

Fortunately, polls have shown broad support for abortion rights in Florida, and voters in other states have rejected similar ballot initiatives. But this is an example of the extremes to which the anti-abortion movement can go without Roe v. Wade and it’s the type of next step that could pick up steam in conservative state legislatures, as it has in Georgia and Arizona.

The rationale goes that, if life begins at conception, then ending a pregnancy is no different than murder. This might seem like a fringe belief to most Americans. But, until just a few months ago, banning abortions with no exception for rape and incest was also a fringe idea. Yet here we are: Florida now bans abortions after 15 weeks without those exceptions, and many other states have done so as well.

Between the 1973 Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court ruling and 2020, the nonprofit National Advocates for Pregnant Women documented more than 1,700 instances across the country in which women were “arrested, prosecuted, convicted, detained, or forced to undergo medical interventions because of their pregnancy status or outcomes.” Those women were disproportionately Black and brown and usually poor.

In 2012, an Indiana woman faced feticide charges after she attempted suicide while pregnant. Last year, an Alabama woman faced felony charges for taking prescription medication for debilitating back pain while pregnant. The charges were later dropped. Many others have been charged for drug use during pregnancy, according to the NAPW.

At least 11 states have “extremely broad” fetal personhood language on the books, according to the NAPW. Most of these laws were passed while abortion rights were protected in the Constitution. They were mostly symbolic, but with that protection gone, questions arise on how these laws can be applied.

Georgia is about to test that. Under the state’s abortion ban, a fetus is considered a person after cardiac activity is detected, roughly at six weeks, making it eligible for child support and state income tax exemptions.

Criminalizing the actions of women and medical providers seems to be at the core of “personhood” measures. It’s surreal that such extreme ideas could gain traction in the United States, but we dismiss these efforts at our own risk.