Rethinking Fetal Personhood in Conceptualizing Roe.

Abstract

lawsuits, licensure loss, and even prosecution, and many will leave states where those threats are too great. All pregnancy-capable individuals benefit from the tremendous advances in fetal and pregnancy care that have resulted from the past decades of research, and anyone who learns that their wanted pregnancy is affected by a treatable condition benefits from the increasing availability of surgical and other prenatal interventions. But since any medical intervention entails some risk, however small, and many currently available in utero interventions are still classed as innovative care or research, these leading-edge interventions are likely to become less accessible or inaccessible in states with blanket abortion bans— leaving parents with difficult or even insurmountable barriers to healthy outcomes for a deeply desired pregnancy. In a post-Roe world, state and local abortion bans will harm pregnant people and their future children, along with everyone else, by deterring research and innovative care in many of the places that need them most.