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Alabama has joined the growing number of states determined to overturn Roe v. Wade by banning abortion from conception forward.1 The Alabama Human Life Protection Act,2 as the law is called, subjects a doctor who performs an abortion to as many as ninety-nine years in prison.3
The law has no exceptions for rape or incest.4 It redefines an “unborn child, child or person” as “[a] human being, specifically including an unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability.”5 We ought to take our laws seriously. Under the laws, people have all sorts of rights and protections. When a state grants full personhood to a fetus, should they not apply equally?6 For example, should child support start at conception?7
Every state permits the custodial parent—who has primary physical custody of the child and is primarily responsible for his or her day-to-day care—to receive child support from the noncustodial parent.8 Because a fetus resides in its mother, and receives all nutrition and care from its mother’s body, the mother should be eligible for child support as soon as the fetus is declared a person—at conception in Alabama,9 six weeks in states that declare personhood at a fetal heartbeat, eight weeks in Missouri,10 but at birth in states that have not banned abortion.11 And what about deportation?12 Can a pregnant immigrant who conceived her child in the United States be expelled?13 Because doing so would require deporting a U.S. citizen.14 To determine the citizenship of a fetal person requires examination of Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”15
The word “born” was not defined by the drafters.16 Presumably, they intended the standard dictionary definition: brought forth by birth.17 Our dates of birth are traditionally when our lives begin; we do not celebrate our dates of conception or the date of our sixth week in utero.18 But in states with abortion bans, “born” takes on new meaning.19 Now legislatures assign an arbitrary time during gestation to indicate when life, personhood and, presumably, the rights that accompany these statuses take hold.20 This grant of natural personhood at a point before birth brings application of the Fourteenth Amendment into question and may thus give a fetus citizenship rights—but only in those states. There are no laws that allow the United States to deny citizenship rights to a natural-born citizen merely because they reside with, or in, a noncitizen.21
It goes on ...
