A Nation Divided: The Relentless March Toward Fetal Personhood

In the shadow of a post-Dobbs America, a quiet but seismic shift is underway. Twelve states currently enforce abortion bans with limited exceptions at all stages of pregnancy. Four more have bans that kick in after about six weeks—before most women know they’re pregnant.

Since January, at least 11 state legislatures have introduced bills redefining abortion as homicide, a maneuver experts warn is not merely about restricting reproductive rights but enshrining “fetal personhood” into law—a doctrine granting embryos constitutional rights equal to living citizens.

This campaign, once relegated to the fringes of political discourse, now threatens to unravel decades of civil liberties and plunge the nation into a constitutional crisis.

“This is a war on women disguised as legal doctrine,” said Lisa McCormick, the anti-establishment progressive who challenged Senator Bob Menendez in the 2018 Democratic primary, earning nearly 40% of the vote despite being vastly outspent.

A staunch advocate for reproductive rights, McCormick lambasted the hypocrisy of both parties: “Corporate Democrats like Cory Booker talk about equality while ignoring the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment and allowing Republicans to dismantle Roe v. Wade. They testified it was ‘settled law,’ then stood by as precedent was shredded”.

The fetal personhood movement’s endgame, as historian Mary Ziegler outlines in her book Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction, is a Supreme Court ruling granting embryos equal protection under the Constitution.

Anti-abortion legislators are flooding statehouses with extreme bills—classifying abortion as homicide, mandating child support for “unborn children,” and equating miscarriage with wrongful death.

“These laws aren’t about protecting life—they’re about controlling women,” McCormick argued. “If a fetus is a person, then every pregnant person is a suspect. This is the criminalization of biology.”

The implications are staggering. In Alabama, a 2024 Supreme Court ruling declared frozen embryos “extrauterine children,” halting IVF treatments and exposing contradictions within the anti-abortion movement.

Meanwhile, criminal cases targeting pregnant people have surged, with Pregnancy Justice documenting over 200 prosecutions for pregnancy loss or self-managed abortions in the year after Dobbs.

McCormick condemned this trend: “Women are being jailed for miscarriages, while politicians who claim to value life slash healthcare and childcare. It’s cruelty masquerading as morality.”

McCormick, who has long criticized Democratic leadership for capitulating to corporate interests, tied the fetal personhood push to broader systemic failures.

“The same establishment Democrats who take donations from Big Pharma and Wall Street are too timid to codify Roe or defend the ERA after 38 states ratified the amendment. They’ve allowed Republicans to hijack the courts and redefine personhood,” she said. Her 2018 Senate campaign emphasized grassroots mobilization against such compromises, declaring, “We don’t need more politicians—we need warriors for justice.”

Ziegler’s research reveals the movement’s darker truth: Fetal personhood advocates have co-opted civil rights language, framing embryos as “the most marginalized class in America”—a grotesque distortion weaponizing equality rhetoric to erase the rights of the living.

Even seemingly benign policies, like tax credits for embryos, normalize the idea that a cluster of cells holds more legal weight than the person carrying it.

“This isn’t about life—it’s about power,” McCormick said. “They want to turn pregnancy into a state-monitored condition, where every decision is policed.”

The chaos is already here. Fertility clinics shuttered in Alabama. Families grappling with IVF access. Women jailed for outcomes beyond their control.

“The endgame is a federal ruling declaring life begins at conception,” Ziegler warns—a decision that would nullify state protections and render reproductive freedom obsolete.

McCormick, however, remains defiant.

“We cannot let dogma eclipse democracy. The fight isn’t just for choice—it’s for the recognition that women are fully human, with rights that cannot be legislated away.” She called for urgent action: “Congress must codify Roe, expand the courts, and pass the ERA. If establishment Democrats won’t lead, we’ll replace them with braver Americans who will.”

"In this new America, the stakes could not be higher. For if a fetus is a person, then every pregnancy is a potential crime scene—and every woman will be treated like a potential suspect,” McCormick said.