Fetal personhood: Correcting an attempt to "fact check" Monte Mader

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW7xuy9e3yM

The Trump administration is calling frozen embryos children

A document on an embryo adoption program may be marginal – but it marks an escalation in the pursuit of fetal personhood…

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/25/the-trump-administration-is-calling-frozen-embryos-children

 

Florida Courts Ordered Them to Have C-Sections — ProPublica

The similarities in their cases were striking. Both women had three prior C-sections. They had questioned the need for their previous surgeries and arrived prepared to fight for vaginal births. And both women are Black. 

They had argued that compelling them to have C-sections violated their rights to make medical decisions. Hospital staff said their medical decisions threatened the health of the fetus. It would be up to the courts to decide which one mattered more…

https://www.propublica.org/article/florida-court-ordered-c-sections 

 

Dahlia Lithwick on the Courts vs. Trump (Al Franken podcast)

We're joined by Dahlia Lithwick, award-winning journalist, author, and host of the Amicus podcast. Dahlia looks at the judicial pushback against the Trump administration, as the Courts have stood up to Trump's policies on birthright citizenship and deportation. We also discuss Trump’s targeting of law firms.

The Supreme Court notably ruled 9-0 that the administration must facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, which it has ignored. Is this the Constitutional crisis we've been anticipating? Will Trump pay a price for ignoring The Supreme Court?

Plus, Dahlia breaks down why a fetal personhood bill will inevitably be brought before The Supreme Court.

Listen to Dahlia's Amicus podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/amicus-with-dahlia-lithwick-law-justice-and-the-courts/id928790786

Read Dahlia in Slate: https://slate.com/author/dahlia-lithwick
Interview: 

https://www.podbean.com/ew/dir-tnb2i-25565c72

Catholic hospital ditches "pro-life" rhetoric to avoid malpractice lawsuit payout

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYe6B9D6dpw

 

Woman's arrest after miscarriage in Georgia draws fear and anger

"Chandler-Scott's arrest comes at a time when a growing number of women are facing pregnancy-related prosecutions in which the fetus is treated as a person with legal rights. And her experience raises troubling questions about miscarriages that happen in states with strict abortion laws, women's health advocates say. How should remains be disposed of? And who gets to decide?" 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/georgia-arrest-miscarriage-fetal-personhood-rcna199400

 

After Roe, pregnant women face increased risk of criminal prosecution | PBS News

In the first year after the Supreme Court ended the federal right to an abortion, 210 women faced charges for behavior related to pregnancy, abortion, pregnancy loss or birth. The decision emboldened prosecutors to develop aggressive strategies to charge and imprison pregnant women and mothers. But even prior to the overturning of Roe, hundreds of women faced such charges. Sarah Varney reports...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/after-overturn-of-roe-more-women-face-prosecution-for-what-they-do-while-pregnant

'I'm real tired of it': Experts put 'corrupt liar' Alito on notice amid Supreme Court leak - Raw Story

"Sam Alito knows that the EMTALA statute requires stabilizing treatment for a pregnant woman OR her fetus, not a pregnant woman AND her fetus. The statute was amended because hospitals were turning away pregnant patients whose fetuses needed stabilizing care even if they themselves did not. The law doesn't require a physician to prioritize the life of a fetus over the life of a pregnant person. But Sam Alito wants it to. He's singing the personhood blues. So he just lies about what the statute says. Textualist, my shiny Black ass. He's a corrupt liar."…

https://www.rawstory.com/samuel-alito-attacked-corupt-liar/

Southern Baptists Vote to Oppose Use of I.V.F. - The New York Times

Last month, the head of the denomination's public policy arm sent a letter to the U.S. Senate asking legislators to clamp down on in vitro fertilization, stating that the practice harms children and women, who may be unaware of "complications and moral concerns."…

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/12/us/ivf-vote-southern-baptists.html

Overheard (Alabama Edition) #12 (Freethought Today)

"Abortion bans and fetal personhood seek to control women; to surveil, criminalize and further marginalize those who are deemed a threat to prevailing hierarchies; and diminish their ability to participate in public and civic life by establishing legal and constitutional protections for fetuses that are being denied to them — a threat to democracy as clear as day. "

 — Lourdes A. Rivera, president of Pregnancy Justice

https://www.freethoughttoday.com/free/overheard-alabama-edition/

Indiana appeals court finds exception to abortion ban in Hobby Lobby ruling

The plaintiffs argued that their religious doctrine teaches that a fetus is part of a woman's body, not an independent being with its own rights. The abortion ban, then, violates their religious freedom to decide whether to have an abortion. This argument, which undergirds similar religious freedom lawsuits across the country, including in Kentucky, Missouri and Florida, is a profound pushback against the Christian right's attempts to assert their position, that life begins at conception and that a fetus is a person, as the only genuine religious belief… 

…the decision shows how, in the decade since the Hobby Lobby decision, there's been a backlash against the Christian right's efforts to impose their religious beliefs on everyone else…

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/indiana-abortion-ruling-hobby-lobby-rcna146844

Abortion opponents push for 'fetal personhood' laws, giving rights to embryos (Tonya Mosley; Fresh Air podcast)

The Guardian's reproductive health reporter Carter Sherman says efforts are underway in a number of states to assign fetuses "some kind of rights that we would generally ascribe to a human person."

Interview: 

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/04/1242774406/abortion-opponents-push-for-fetal-personhood-laws-giving-rights-to-embryos

Overheard (Alabama Edition) #6, 7, and 8 (Freethought Today)

"The idea is absurd and unscientific. It is instead tied to a religious crusade to downgrade the personhood of women by conferring personhood on frozen embryos."  

— New York Times columnist Charles Blow 

"Alabama is a dangerous theocracy. He [Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker] is self-anointed as the divine guide to interpret your laws through ancient religious texts and his own 17th-century filter. You are subject to his delusions, his interpretation of God, his inner mandate, despite your pesky First Amendment right to believe your own religious truth, or to believe nothing at all."  

— AL.com columnist John Archibald 

"You may think life is a matter of consciousness. Or you may think it is connected to the first stirrings of an embryo in the womb. Or you may simply think it is all pretty complicated. But it will not matter what you or I or anyone thinks or believes if the theocrats gain power. As in Alabama, they will use the law to impose their dogma on us all."

 — Seattle Times cartoonist David Horsey

https://www.freethoughttoday.com/free/overheard-alabama-edition/

Overheard (Alabama Edition) #5 Freethought Today

"Having three embryos in the freezer is not the same to me as having one that implants and become a pregnancy, and it’s not the same as having a child. We have three embryos. We don’t have three children." — Megan Legerski of Tuscaloosa, Ala., who is currently undergoing infertility treatment.

https://www.freethoughttoday.com/free/overheard-alabama-edition/

Overheard (Alabama Edition) #4 (Freethought Today)

"The longer-term danger — indeed the apparent longer-term goal — is to raise and expand the definition of unborn personhood, to go after birth control methods and reproductive technologies that involve fertilized eggs. The ultimate aim, of course, is to have the fertilized egg declared a person from the moment of conception, under state constitutions and, ultimately, the 14th Amendment." 

 — Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus 

https://www.freethoughttoday.com/free/overheard-alabama-edition/

Overheard (Alabama Edition) #3 (Freethought Today)

"The longer-term danger — indeed the apparent longer-term goal — is to raise and expand the definition of unborn personhood, to go after birth control methods and reproductive technologies that involve fertilized eggs. The ultimate aim, of course, is to have the fertilized egg declared a person from the moment of conception, under state constitutions and, ultimately, the 14th Amendment."

 — Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus

https://www.freethoughttoday.com/free/overheard-alabama-edition/

Overheard (Alabama Edition) #1 (Freethought Today)

"It is humiliating to even have to say this: that women matter more than fetuses or embryos, that a frozen cell in a petri dish is not a human being, but we are. It is an absurdity to make this argument, an exhausting waste of our time, a degradation. "

 — Guardian columnist Moria Donegan

https://www.freethoughttoday.com/free/overheard-alabama-edition/

The Endgame in the Battle Over Abortion - POLITICO

In Germany, for example, the nation's Constitutional Court interpreted the Basic Law, the equivalent of the Constitution, as protecting a right to life for a fetus or unborn child. Yet in 1993, the court held that recognizing fetal rights did not require criminalizing abortion early in pregnancy. Indeed, the German court ruled that the law had to balance women's and fetal rights — and that honoring fetal rights should primarily involve addressing the reasons that led some to terminate their pregnancies, such as a lack of adequate housing or health care. 

 In the United States, by contrast, anti-abortion groups have adopted a punitive approach in part because they have aligned with and relied on the Republican Party since the 1980s... 

 When the time is right, these groups will argue that originalism requires state and federal courts to hold that personhood under the Constitution begins the moment an egg is fertilized. And if that opportunity comes, the key question remaining for many personhood proponents will be clear: Who will be punished for harming those persons, and how much?…

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/24/personhood-abortion-legal-fight-00147138

Opinion | Why ‘Life Begins at Conception’ Is Less Christian Than You Think - POLITICO

There is no denying the political utility of the idea that life begins at conception. Since the 1970s, it has served to unite many Protestants and Catholics in a reproductive alliance bent on protecting the "sanctity of life" that has also provided millions of base voters for the Republican Party. 

However, since the fall of Roe, it is clear that the logic of the movement is headed in a direction that will cause problems both theologically and politically. Once they understand the implications for IVF, birth control and even on abortions in extenuating circumstances, many Protestants, including evangelicals and charismatics, might want to reconsider whether they really want to make the theological case for extending personhood to embryos. Catholic theology not only insists that life begins at conception but also outlaws reproductive technologies, birth control and the death penalty. Up until this point in history, many Protestants haven't been willing to go there — are they now?…

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/21/life-conception-christian-theology-00147804

States push ‘fetal personhood’ bills despite outrage at Alabama IVF ruling

An "unborn person", according to the Iowa bill, is "an individual organism of the species homo sapiens from fertilization to live birth". Such a definition would include frozen embryos, which are eggs that have been fertilized by sperm. If passed by the Republicans who control the Iowa state senate, the bill could endanger IVF access in the state. But because the language of the bill is so broad, prosecutors may also try to apply it to a wide range of circumstances. Causing the "death of an unborn person" intentionally through acts like murder, assault or sexual abuse would be a Class A felony, punishable by a life sentence. Doing so unintentionally would be a Class B felony. The bill even specifies that unintentionally causing "the death of an unborn person while drag racing" would be a Class D felony...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/20/states-fetal-personhood-bill