Recentering Pregnancy: A Response to Fetal Personhood
Abstract
Post-Dobbs, states are pursuing fetal personhood rights while pregnant people are losing theirs. Ever since Roe v. Wade was decided, the anti-abortion movement has been strategizing on how to establish fetal personhood. For decades, Roe protected the right to an abortion, but abortion-hostile states nevertheless drafted fetal protection laws that were used to punish and control pregnant people for their conduct while pregnant. Now, post-Dobbs, states are pursuing comprehensive fetal per-sonhood laws, and blatantly prioritizing fetal life at the expense of pregnant people’s health and safety. This Note argues for recentering pregnancy—the pregnant person and the experience of pregnancy—in our law, policy, and advocacy. Fetal protection laws should be drafted, as they were originally, to ensure the protection of pregnant people. Fetal per-sonhood measures should be resisted, as they only portend more harm to pregnant people. And more attention must be paid to the pain, injury, and risk of death that accompanies pregnancy, in order to improve the lives of pregnant people and expose the violence inflicted by fetal person-hood policies and abortion bans.