“While often presented as an insurmountable conflict, as illustrated by the decisions of the high courts of Colombia and Mexico, there is room for common ground policies that protect prenatal life and support the rights of people who are or can become
“I argue this Right not only secures a right to abortion but also provides legal support for the realization of the full personhood of pregnant people including the protection from their criminalization.”
“The rise of commercial DNA testing has created a new pathway for policing through Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (“FIGG”), with a perhaps unintended consequence of facilitating prosecutions for pregnancy loss.”
This essay explores the legal architecture and growth of these ideas, both after Roe and after Dobbs, in three parts. It argues that, in an era in which suspicion about pregnancy loss seems to be growing, prosecutions involving pregnancy that
Mental health conditions, including deaths by suicide and overdose, are among the leading causes of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States. These are not mystifying realities but preventable tragedies: foreseeable outcomes of laws and policies that prioritize harm and punishment
Legal fetal ‘personhood’ is the idea that every single stage of fetal life, including the collection of cells formed at conception, is entitled to all the same legal rights as already born people. This concept makes no legal sense, any