Fetal Personhood Law In the United States
A fetus becomes a legal person when they are born. But the movement to confer legal personhood on fetuses, zygotes, and even fertilized eggs pre-birth has been gaining legal ground for years.
The dangers are serious: if a legal person exists every time a sperm and an egg meet, that means there is no end to what the state can mandate a pregnant person can and cannot do.
Conferring legal personhood on a fetus will create confusion, disrupt assisted reproduction techniques like IVF, threaten medical privacy, and upend the rules and regulations of American life. The effects can be devastating, particularly for people of color, immigrants, people with disabilities, and low-income people.
Legal Voice has long tracked extremist efforts to disempower the rights of pregnant people under the guise of legal fetal personhood. Below is a timeline illustrating the history of the legal fetal personhood movement in this country.
Learn more about fetal personhood and its effects on emergency medical care in the journal article written by Legal Voice’s own Wendy Heipt, Senior Reproductive Health and Justice Counsel:
EMTALA In a Post-Dobbs World: The March Towards Fetal Personhood Continues (University of Idaho Law Review, Vol. 59, 2024)