Written by: m.wilson
PART TWO
3. The topic of “personhood” has been a central tenet of the abortion debate, but the movement, in its current form, was spawned during the 1960s as philosophies updated to the modern era.
4. Transgender visibility in pregnancy – TGNC adults (trans gender and gender non-conforming) are becoming pregnant during testosterone therapy due to a lack of education. Answering this is the opinion that anti-trans legislation prevents symbiosis between gender and reproductive care in some cases. Trans gender health care and abortion rights have been described as ‘parallel struggles’ in 2024 legislation, by Maryland Matters.
5. Bodily autonomy in ‘forced pregnancy’ – a direct result of personhood.
Before the 19th century, in Common law, abortion was considered criminal after the “quickening” (or fetal movement) occurred, and that was when it became a person with legal rights. Later, in the 19th century, the American Medical Association advocated for the institution of abortion bans in every state; and in the 20th, individual states began liberalizing abortion laws – affirming personhood as one of the fundamental concepts argued by Catholics.
Of course, Personhood was addressed in Roe v. Wade (1973), when the Supreme Court ruled that the word “person” in the Fourteenth Amendment does not refer to the unborn. This victory would be countered during following years with numerous state initiatives like “fetal homicide,” meant for application to violent crime. 21st century groups like Personhood USA, a national organization formed in 2008, sought to define personhood at the moment of fertilization – and other such movements, culminated in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, the case that would overturn Roe v Wade.
When Fetuses Gain Personhood: Understanding the Impact on IVF, Contraception, Medical Treatment, Criminal Law, Child Support, and Beyond – Pregnancy Justice (2024), a must-read, is a complete breakdown of the personhood framework and how it’s expressed in anti-abortion laws, by state. The paper articulates the fundamental philosophies of those voters who support personhood legislation, matching them statutorily. It also catalogs personhood throughout criminal codes (those defining “Person,” “Individual,” or “Human Being” in reference to fetuses), as well as the “Broadest Personhood Provisions,” by state. Pregnancy Justice stresses the importance of dismantling personhood ideology due to the nature of prosecution and warns not to rely on common sense when it comes to definitions of criminal abuse, which could ultimately evolve to include things like driving over the speed limit.
“The Catholic Church in particular is known for its opposition to in vitro fertilization and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has explained why it believes children should not be conceived using in vitro fertilization.” – Lewis
The ability to freeze embryos is critical to reproductive freedom, and women need laws to protect their frozen embryos while also avoiding the pitfalls of such provisions.
An Alabama Supreme Court ruled in LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine (2024) that frozen embryos are child victims under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, allowing the LePages, a couple whose embryos were tragically destroyed in an accident at the Center for Reproductive Medicine, to claim damages in a wrongful death lawsuit. Despite this ruling, the IVF providers subsequently received legal immunity (without addressing the personhood issue), and months later, the LePages and two other couples dropped their cases. So far, it is unclear if Mrs. LePage was/is now beyond the help of the IVF method, but if she was, one could certainly understand how she and her family would feel as if they’d lost their actual children.
The Anti-Abortion Movement Has Been Pushing a ‘Fetal Personhood’ Strategy – It’s Not What You Think by the National Women’s Law Center (2025) contains three fact sheets. The first details potential strategies for establishing legal personhood for embryos and zygotes in federal and state law, and for separating rights from those of the pregnant person. It discusses the use of the 14th Amendment and other ‘evasive and oppressive’ controls over pregnant persons. The second fact sheet reviews the historical layering of laws/civil laws throughout the past half-century. For example, cases like Whitner v State (1997) in S Carolina, which ‘expanded the definition of a “child” by altering a child abuse statute to include a fetus, greenlighting the state’s ability to pursue child endangerment charges against people who use drugs during pregnancy.‘ Alabama and Oklahoma are two other states where child abuse laws were expanded to criminalize women for their behavior while pregnant.
Fact sheet three reviews personhood cases like Brittany Watts, who was charged with “abuse of a corpse” due to a miscarriage in the toilet. The reports also explain how the use of surveillance in reproductive decisions and the repercussions of abortion bans in states like Texas – caused ‘the rate of sepsis to shoot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost their pregnancies in the second trimester.’ Moreover, women are dying: “dozens more pregnant and postpartum women died in Texas hospitals [after the state banned abortion] than had in pre-pandemic years.” State Policy Trends 2024: Anti-Abortion Policymakers Redouble Attacks on Bodily Autonomy from the Guttmacher Institute further identifies trends that have culminated in a perilous moment for women like 28-year-old Amber Thurman, a medical assistant who died in 2022 of sepsis because she could not access legal abortion care in Georgia.
4. New Survey Shows Abortion Bans’ Unique and Chilling Impact on LGBTQI+ People” by The Center for American Progress (May 2025). This report provides research describing the way the LGBTQ community not only suffers the consequences of discrimination, affordability, and access, but also must contend with religious exemptions, which allow various providers to discriminate. The figures show that this community is twice as likely to have difficulty finding appropriate care and services, and is most comparable to disabled individuals with accommodation issues; furthermore, that black LGBTQ persons are most likely to travel out of state for reproductive services. The paper reinforces the precepts of the reproductive justice movement when it states that:
Abortion bans are anti-family, disproportionately affecting parents and causing many people to delay or altogether give up hope of having children due to fears of being denied emergency reproductive care.
Transgender, Nonbinary, and Gender Expansive Experiences with Telehealth Abortion Care, (NIH) medical journal, September 2025, is a case study of trans and “gender expansive” patients who received reproductive care via telehealth abortion care. They concluded that telehealth is a great way to serve individuals turned away from what resources remain after the implementation of restrictive laws. Becker and the authors describe their desire to add to the literature regarding ‘self-managed abortion, overall abortion experiences, preferences, and pregnancy outcomes.’
Abortion experiences and preferences of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people in the United States by Moseson and colleagues is a slightly older study of procedure options, revealing that telehealth was favored and more convenient. Many interview participants identified the mental stresses associated with numerous participating individuals involved with in-person care. Opportunities for improving abortion care: a key stakeholder analysis of best practices for addressing the needs of transgender, nonbinary, and gender expansive people seeking abortions (Barnett et al. Reproductive Health (2024) – For some readers, this research paper may be an introduction to acronyms and terms like “TGE” = transgender, “nonbinary,” and “gender expansive” individuals; “deadnaming” = calling a transgender person by their birth name, and “SRH” = sexual and reproductive healthcare. The goal of the study was to add to a growing body of literature aimed at assessing and eventually ‘improving access and quality for TGE abortion seekers,’ which should be ‘expanded upon for future studies to inform clinical, context-specific recommendations.‘ Trans + Abortion Rights Activists Fight for Bodily Autonomy by Chase Strangio – TIME (October 2024), surmises that anti-trans laws are associated with a 72 percent increase in suicides among trans and nonbinary individuals. Also that many trans families leave states like Oklahoma to receive gender affirming care, fearing government intervention resulting in the loss of their children. The Dobbs decision has had a major hand in this situation, since it provides additional opportunities for “sex-based” restrictions on health care, which have led to fatal situations from “rare” complications; all of which the authors have termed “a life-or-death fight for bodily autonomy, health care, and freedom.” TURN PAGE >>
