Alabama Supreme Court rules that frozen embryos outside the womb are children The lawsuit involved embryos stored at a fertility clinic in Mobile. According to the opinion, in 2020 a patient “managed to wander” into the fertility clinic and remove several frozen embryos from the nursery, according to the lawsuit. The patient dropped the frozen … Read more
The bill would allow individuals to sue for “wrongful death” after an abortion – language that suggests that a fetus is legally considered a person. Establishing the legal personhood of fetuses is a longtime goal of the anti-abortion movement and could have sweeping implications for vast swathes of US law, as it could leave pregnant … Read more
Muñiz was quoting from one of the earliest passages in Florida’s constitution that says that all natural persons “are equal before the law and have inalienable rights, among which are the right to enjoy and defend life and liberty, to pursue happiness, to be rewarded for industry, and to acquire, possess and protect property.” If … Read more
Johnson highlighted two bills House Republicans passed this week. One would block a proposed federal rule meant to keep states from using money from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF) — one of the programs most often associated with the term welfare — to support anti-abortion centers. Another bill would require that colleges … Read more
“There’s two issues here: One is the slippery slope that we’ve seen play out that normalizes the idea of an unborn child, or fetus, or fertilized egg, or embryo as an entity for which you can attach rights,” Sussman explains. The second issue is the bill would create an opportunity for another person — the … Read more
Abortion “abolitionists,” on the other hand, hold what they believe to be a more ideologically consistent stance: if a fetus is a person, then abortion is tantamount to murder. And patients should be punished accordingly. Read more at The Guardian
In defending themselves against a lawsuit, Texas officials have argued that an “unborn child” may not have rights under the US constitution, putting them in tension with arguments made by the state’s attorney’s general’s office as well as Republican lawmakers to support restrictions to abortion. Read more at The Guardian
She is one of hundreds of women prosecuted on similar charges in Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Law enforcement and prosecutors in those states have expanded their use of child abuse and neglect laws in recent years to police the conduct of pregnant women under the concept of “fetal personhood”, a tenet promoted by … Read more
LRB-2486 would allow parents to claim an exemption on their tax returns for “unborn children for whom a fetal heartbeat has been detected.” Co-sponsor Rep. Donna Rozar made the proposal’s intent crystal clear: The bill, she said, “recognizes an unborn child as a distinct human being prior to birth by allowing the child to be … Read more
Although much is still unknown about how abortion bans will be enforced, we have arrived at a time when abortions—and even other pregnancy losses—might be investigated as potential crimes. In many states across post-Roe America, expect to see women treated like criminals. Read more at The Atlantic
