Longstanding dogma dictates that recognizing pregnancy loss threatens abortion rights—acknowledging that miscarriage and stillbirth involve a valuable loss, the theory goes, creates a slippery slope to fetal personhood. For decades, anti-abortion advocates have capitalized on this tension and weaponized the grief that can accompany pregnancy loss in their efforts to legislate personhood and end abortion rights. In response, abortion rights advocates have historically fought legislative efforts to support those experiencing pregnancy loss, and more recently, remained silent, alienating those who suffer a miscarriage or stillbirth. Join us as Professor Greer Donley presents her forthcoming Article, Subjective Fetal Personhood, which is the first to argue that this perceived tension can be reconciled through the concept of subjective and relational fetal value.
Greer Donley is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University Pittsburgh Law School. Her teaching and scholarship focus on healthcare, bioethics, and FDA law, especially as those topics relate to reproductive justice. Her scholarship has explored a broad range of reproductive healthcare topics, including the intersection of pregnancy loss and abortion, the regulation of medication abortion, the right to abortion in the context of fetal anomaly, contraceptive equity in the Affordable Care Act, and the regulations surrounding the consumption of pharmaceuticals in pregnant and lactating women.
Contact heather.branch@yale.edu for the link.
Sponsoring Organization(s)
ISP, PSRJ