Pending State Bills Would Allow Homicide Charges In Abortions

Conservative state legislators have filed a new batch of bills that would grant legal rights to fetuses and fertilized embryos. Lawmakers in at least eight states — Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas — have considered bills to go even further, to punish women who seek abortions. Most of these states have already banned abortion. Criminalization bills would allow women to face homicide charges for obtaining abortions, reports Stateline. The bills would classify an embryo or fetus as an “unborn” or “preborn child” who can be a victim of homicide. Many of the bills would repeal parts of state laws that explicitly exempt women from being punished for seeking abortions. “If we truly believe in the equal humanity of the preborn, then our laws must uphold that truth in practice,” said Idaho state Sen. Brandon Shippy. His bill would allow women who seek abortions to be prosecuted under the state’s homicide laws.

“Justice requires accountability for intentional actions,” Shippy said. “To exempt any group from accountability actually undermines the law’s integrity and diminishes the value of the life being protected.”

Most lawmakers admit this type of legislation is a long shot. Similar bills are still pending in five other states — Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Texas. Conservative lawmakers in several states are introducing less punitive bills that are structured around the same legal concept: fetal personhood. Fetal personhood is the idea that a fetus, embryo or fertilized egg has the same legal rights as a newborn. If the law considers fetuses to be people, then abortion should legally be considered murder. Experts and have long warned of the legal chaos that could result from fetal personhood laws, with potential implications extending far beyond abortion. If a Montana bill is approved by two-thirds of the legislature, the question would ask Montanans whether they support amending the state constitution to grant full rights to all people “at any stage of development, beginning at the state of fertilization or conception.” At a legislative hearing, residents expressed concern that a personhood ballot measure would not only outlaw abortion but also eliminate access to in vitro fertilization and expose women who miscarry to possible criminal prosecution.