If the supreme court was ruling on a law that
said upon becoming pregnant you lose your
civil rights i think there would be pretty
clear outcry against that
but in fact each law that establishes fetal
rights or the right to deprive women of access
to health care  decision making each one of
those in fact says at some point in your pregnancy
you have fewer civil rights than other
part other members of our society because
there is no point in anybody else's life where
we say you can't make a health care decision
you can't choose a medical procedure that will
have the best possible outcome for your health
I'll give you other examples
a woman in utah I think we've talked about this
before gave birth to twins one was stillborn
she was arrested on charges of murder on the
theory that because the fetus has rights her
decision not to have a c-section two weeks
earlier her exercise of her right to informed
medical decision making could be viewed as
murder
%uh if a woman has a stillbirth and the
state believes something she did or didn't do
caused it she can be prosecuted in theory
for murder even in south dakota it's very
interesting a bill there says
nothing in this
will make it a crime for a woman to have an
abortion yet the state has more and more declarations
of fetal rights they're not gonna have to
prosecute her under that statute they can
prosecutor her as a child abuser or a murder
statute
so that really we're talking about using
the concept of the humanization of fetuses
as a way of dehumanizing women and the debate
isn't really about a particular form of
abortion again it is about how do we value
women in this country do we value them so
little
that states and the federal government no longer
has to take their health into account
this excerpt is brought to you by the massachusetts
school of law
