Making Fetuses Into Babies
<p>When my first pregnancy ended in an early loss several years ago, I struggled to name what I had lost. It felt like more than “fetal tissue,” but less than a baby. Rather than self-help books on overcoming miscarriage, it was scholarship on abortion and social personhood from my own discipline of Anthropology that, years later, helped me make sense of my experience. I read works on these topics in the summer of 2022, as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Many in the anti-choice movement at that time didn’t seem to struggle with the classification of an early pregnancy in the way that I did, as they characterized all embryos and fetuses as babies whose “lives” must be saved. But mandating that unwanted pregnancies be carried to term fails to recognize that forced birth does not make fetuses into babies or persons.</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/national-center-for-institutional-diversity/making-fetuses-into-babies-1372cceecee"><strong>Read More</strong></a></p>