#fetal-personhood

#fetal-personhood

The lawsuit challenges a Michigan law that overrides patients' advance medical directives if they're pregnant; advance directives are legal documents that spell out people's choices for end-of-life medical care. But Michigan is one state of many states that restricts people's rights if they're pregnant, meaning hospitals can force unwanted medical interventions like life support in order to protect potential fetal life. These laws are fundamentally fetal personhood statutes, giving legal rights to embryos and fetuses that supplant the rights of the person gestating them.

Many Americans assume that the criminalization of pregnancy is limited to red states with aggressive anti-abortion prosecutors and draconian bans on reproductive health care. But it isn't. In reality, prosecutors in blue states have also deployed the concept of "fetal personhood" to punish women for their pregnancy outcomes. When women experience a miscarriage or stillbirth, they are vulnerable to investigation and arrest if the state suspects they had an unlawful hand in their pregnancy loss.