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In an opinion article in BMJ, Senior Associate Dean Terry McGovern, PhD student and adjunct professor Ira Memaj, and Lourdes Rivera, president of Pregnancy Justice, discuss the perils of fetal personhood laws.
The authors argue that such laws threaten the quality of reproductive healthcare, jeopardize bodily autonomy, and exacerbate economic inequity.
This threat is not new, the authors note.
“Seizing on tragic stories of violence against pregnant women, 38 states have adopted feticide laws that allow homicide charges to be brought for violent acts that cause the loss of a pregnancy.8 While most of these laws exclude pregnant people for being charged in relation to their own pregnancies, they have served to normalise the idea that fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses are separate human beings and crime victims.”
Read the full text here.
