Slate: “Texas’ short-lived prosecution of Lizelle Herrera, who was charged with murder for a self-induced abortion, is a preview of what’s to come if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The far-right bloc of justices has signaled their interest in overturning the precedent, and a decision is expected in June. When Roe is gone, 26 states will ban abortion. Across the country, red states are already building a new regime to mete out punishments for abortion providers, patients, and their families.
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What’s alarming about the rash of recent legislation, though, is how it extends this philosophy to its logical conclusion. The anti-abortion movement has moved beyond the legal regime of the early 1970s, which largely regulated abortion as a medical procedure, with penalties aimed at physicians. Today, the movement promotes fetal personhood, the notion that fetuses (and embryos) are legal persons who deserve equal rights—meaning their termination constitutes homicide. Red states are not just shutting down clinics. They are attempting to create a panopticon that surveils and punishes every individual involved in the termination of a pregnancy.
Conservative lawmakers who view abortion as homicide do not want it to be legal anywhere in America, and they are already trying to stop blue states, as well as the federal government, from facilitating it. Although the FDA has approved medication abortion, some states are seeking to outlaw abortion pills—deeming them a dangerous substance akin to narcotics and imposing yearslong prison sentences on anyone who distributes or possesses them. These drug-trafficking laws are bound to ensnare people who order the pills online, or transport them home from nearby blue states. The growing number of criminal charges against women who obtained an illegal medication abortion demonstrates that it is impossible to criminalize abortion pills without also criminalizing patients themselves. (There were nearly 1,300 criminal investigations of pregnancy outcomes between 2006 and 2020, when Roe was still on the books; that number will spike after it falls.)”