Myths, stereotypes and new laws that raise the question of whether pregnant women are persons

The anti-choice activism of the last four decades has left the U.S. steeped in a dialogue around abortion that portrays pregnant women as murderers and perpetrators of an “unprecedented genocide against the unborn.” This rhetoric, which is becoming increasingly mainstream, not only creates a climate that encourages further restrictions on the right to choose abortion, it undermines the rights and health of all pregnant women. From Time magazine to “What to Expect When You're Expecting,” Americans are bombarded with impossible, ever-changing lists of “dos and don'ts” for pregnant women and a parade of horribles that will supposedly ensue if they fail to comply. Overblown media predictions of a generation destroyed by prenatal drug exposure and a failure of courts to apply evidentiary standards for medical evidence have left women who attempt to carry to term in spite of a drug problem vulnerable to imprisonment, civil commitment, and removal of their children through radical, unintended expansions of the law. Moreover, the idea that fetuses are in need of “protection” from the women who nurture and birth them has emboldened states to punish other pregnant women: those exercise their right to informed refusal of medical treatment, those who have gestational diabetes, and those who feel ambivalence about motherhood. By shifting attention to the punishment of pregnant women, the state distracts from the real causes of poor infant and maternal mortality: poverty, racism, and an uneven and dysfunctional health care system.