Mother vs Fetus

If you Google the word “personhood” the first page of links that pop up are all about the new personhood movement that states that a fetuses rights begins either at conception or immediately after. But if the fetus gains the legal rights to, as Bordo puts it, “be born healthy and sound and to be provided with a safe, healthy environment to promote this end” (87) then what happens to the mother? How is her personhood affected?

I want to ask a question that occurred to me when I was comparing the personhood movement for fetuses to a mother’s personhood. Personhood amendments to state constitutions have already been attempted in a few states including Mississippi and Colorado, and are up to bat in others like Kansas and Ohio. Lets say for the sake of argument that the amendment does get passed, what does this mean for mothers?

The focus of the debate is so centralized on the fetus that it doesn’t really occur to people to ask about what happens to the mother. As I see it, she has three options. She can 1. Keep the baby 2. Put it up for adoption 3. Get an abortion (either in another country where it’s legal or illegally here). By choosing option one or two her life changes dramatically. She is likely to be hindered in her pursuit of what she wants to accomplish with her life. Presumably there is a reason why she did not want to keep the child in the first place, and why carrying the child to term would affect her negatively in some way. If the mother chooses the third option it is costly and dangerous. Thousands of women died from back alley abortions before Roe v. Wade made them legal. And traveling out of the country, while physically safer, is an option that a lot of women simply can’t afford.

Going further than just the wishes of the mother, what happens if medical complications arise? I know that in Judaism, the health of the mother comes before the health of the baby and if you have to choose between saving the life of the child or the life of the mother, the mother is the one chosen. But what would the general guidelines be in terms of law and medicine if both the mother and the fetus had personhood? I briefly looked on the Personhood USA website to see if they addressed that situation, and they didn’t which doesn’t surprise me. Their mission statement “is to serve Jesus by being an Advocate for those who can not speak for themselves, the pre-born child”*. In watching some of their propaganda videos, there was a visual of a scale where one side said baby and the other side said mother, and it was set to show that they should have equal rights. I just want to know what they would propose to do when confronted with some of the examples that Bordo uses in her essay. If only one can be saved, who will it be- the mother or the fetus?

The rights of one person end when they infringe upon the rights of another person, but in order to make a snap medical decision involving two people who are inarguably tied together, boundaries have to be set. In my mind, the solution to this problem would be to come to some sort of compromise. The compromise that I am thinking of would be something along the fetus obtaining more legal personhood as it develops but is not fully a subject until it is actually born. At conception and a few days after, the fetus is comprised of just a few cells. Can that really be called a person? Yes the beginnings of one, but at that stage of development miscarriages can happen for a variety of natural reasons. As the fetus develops, its rights would grow, but never supersede the mothers. Fetuses obviously have rights today as we saw with examples of mothers being forced by the law and medicine to do undergo procedures without consent. A woman can always have another child if she so chooses to, and I don’t believe that we as a culture have the authority to take away her subjectivity in the name of her unborn child.

*http://www.personhoodusa.com/