As a fertile human woman (not to brag, but an OB-GYN once told me my cervix is “perfect”), I sometimes worry about pregnancy. As a 12-year-old girl, there were about 3 months where I was convinced I had immaculately conceived. Turns out, 12-year-olds just have notoriously irregular periods.
But when it comes to fetal personhood laws, my worries are well-founded.
These laws treat fetuses as people, sometimes at the expense of the mothers’ rights. Thirty-eight states, including Indiana, have fetal homicide laws. Originally intended to increase penalties in crimes against pregnant women, the laws have since been used to punish women who ?miscarry.
Repeated ballot measures have failed in their attempts to guarantee what is referred to in the most recent North Dakota measure as “the inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development.”
The “Life at Conception Act” is still floating around Congress. It declares Constitutional protections begin at the moment of ?fertilization.
Lynne M. Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin wrote an excellent piece in the New York Times on Nov. 7, “Pregnant, and No Civil Rights,” that shows how these laws are a detriment to women’s fundamental human rights. Judges make medical decisions instead of doctors, accident-prone women are arrested as attempted murderers and birth plans are decided by sheriffs.
I don’t want to retread that ground, though I do strongly recommend their piece. Here, I am more concerned with how personhood laws fail to make any logical sense.
Research indicates that 22 percent of fertilized eggs fail to implant in the uterus. Following the logic of personhood laws, 22 percent of people die before their mothers are even pregnant.
With so many people dying undetected, should every menstrual period of a sexually active straight person be a time for mourning and reflection? Every bit of spotting a calamity? Oh woe, the people we might have lost. What tragedy Aunt Flo brings.
When I told a friend I was writing this column, she wondered if she should name each period to mark the solemnity of the occasion. Last month was Jim. This month was Rita. We’re all going to miss Rita.
The bizarre nature of this thought process is less funny later in pregnancy.
The 15 to 20 percent of women who experience miscarriages late enough in pregnancy to know about them become suspects in a possible crime.
Increasingly, women who miscarry are arrested even before it is determined why the miscarriage happened, according to the New York Times.
Because some fertilized eggs aren’t carried to term, every fertile female body is a potential crime scene. We become places instead of people. Incubators prone to malfunctions.
And that’s the irony of fetal personhood laws. In pursuing fetal personhood, we have stopped caring about female persons.
casefarr@indiana.edu
