Making Women Pay: The Hidden Costs of Fetal Rights

by Rachel Roth

Once backed primarily by anti-abortion activists, fetal rights claims are now promoted by a wide range of interest groups in American society. Government and corporate policies to define and enforce fetal rights have become commonplace. These developments affect all women―pregnant or not―because women are considered "potentially pregnant" for much of their lives. In her powerful and important book, Rachel Roth brings a new perspective to the debate over fetal rights. She clearly delineates the threat to women's equality posed by the new concept of "maternal-fetal conflict," an idea central to the fetal rights movement in which women and fetuses are seen as having interests that are diametrically opposed.

Roth begins by placing fetal rights politics in historical and comparative context and by tracing the emergence of the notion of fetal rights. Against a backdrop of gripping stories about actual women, she reviews the difficulties fetal rights claims create for women in the areas of employment, health care, and drug and alcohol regulation. She looks at court cases and state legislation over a period of two decades beginning in 1973, the year of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Her exhaustive research shows how judicial decisions and public policies that grant fetuses rights tend to displace women as claimants, as recipients of needed services, and ultimately as citizens.

When a corporation, medical authority, or the state asserts or accepts rights claims on behalf of a fetus, the usual justification involves improving the chance of a healthy birth. This strategy, Roth persuasively argues, is not necessary to achieve the goal of a healthy birth, is often counterproductive to it, and always undermines women's equal standing.

264 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1999

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Were you aware that in recent years serious medical procedures, including caesarean sections and blood transfusions, have been forced on unconsenting women by court orders from judges who held that the rights of their fetuses were in conflict with those of the women, and that the fetus' rights were more important? I was not aware, until I read this book. The idea of being strapped down and having myself sliced open againt my will seems like an image from one of those gruesome movies I've grown out of watching.

I recommend this book to anyone who needs to clarify his or her thinking about the relationship between reproductive rights and the ability of female citizens to enjoy full and equal rights.

I was raised pro-choice, and reading this book was part of the "Come to Jesus" process I went through earlier this year when I really had to evaluate what this means, and what my beliefs in that area truly are. These issues are so charged in this country that there's a certain amount of glossing over and hushing up I feel that goes on around such matters. However, these convictions, like religious faith, need to be examined and tested, or they're left tottering on feet of clay. For me this isn't an easy topic, and really understanding the stakes and what's involved takes some intellectual and emotional work. This book was helpful in that, and focused not on the abortion debate at all but on the more widely applied notion of "fetal rights," and of the legal contruct called "maternal-fetal conflict."

By looking at its applications in areas such as employment and medicine, Roth cogently demonstrates that the assignment of rights to fetuses is a very expensive proposition for which female citizens are left holding the bill: the social cost of fetal rights, she shows, are inevitably borne by women. The ideology of fetal rights, “that women are not entitled to be as self-determining as men because they can become pregnant” (p. 2), poses a vital threat to women’s equality as citizens.

This isn't simple, but it is simple. I found it a helpful, though scary, book.