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The Florida Supreme Court isn’t asking for a fetus to be entitled to a right under the state constitution or abortion law
“We were going to go to sympathetic judges like those on the Florida Supreme Court and ask if it was weird that a fetus was not entitled to a right under the state constitution or abortion law,” she told NPR.
Driskell said the chief justice seemed to be trained on trying to understand what the effects would be on other areas of the law.
Specifically, Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz wanted to know how the amendment might interact with Article I of Florida’s Constitution, which grants “all natural persons” the inalienable right to life.
“I don’t know that I could affirmatively say that the term ‘natural person’ doesn’t, as a matter of ordinary meaning, include the unborn,” Muñiz said during the hearing.
Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California- Davis, said that Chief Justice Muiz is writing an engraved invitation to make the argument to the Florida Supreme Court.
The chief justice’s question about fetal personhood won’t affect the outcome of the cases as the court’s ruling is pending. But Ziegler said the question of fetal personhood “isn’t going anywhere.”
It’s a topic that’s made headlines since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in a recent wrongful death case that embryos are “extrauterine children.” That ruling raised questions around access to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in the state and sent ripples throughout the country.
The campaign arm for the U.S. Senate Republicans sent candidates a clear and concisely rejected any efforts to restrict access to IVF following the Alabama ruling.
The plan that was worked out in the past was similar to the one she believes is being worked on by the anti-abortion movement. When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion, in which he pointed to states that had laws on the books against abortion access.
Fetal murder, wrongful death, and child support are just a few of the laws that have been put in place by members of the anti-abortion rights movement.
Ziegler said each new law passed creates a cumulative effect. The more times a state recognizes a fetus as a person in one area of law, the easier it will be for lawyers to make the argument that it’s inconsistent that fetuses aren’t recognized as people by the Constitution. She said that the dominos for an argument on the national level could be set if states like Alabama and Florida acknowledged fetuses in their constitutions.
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, decisions about abortion regulation reverted to individual states. But Ziegler said if states can continually make laws that give rights to fetuses and that makes it to the highest court, it could potentially cut off access to abortion nationwide.
There are plans by the Republican legislative leaders to revisit the wrongful death bill next year.
The founder of the group Florida Voice for the Unborn told lawmakers that he would say the quiet part out loud. He stated that the wrongful death bill is a sign that unborn children should be treated the same as people in our state laws and constitution.
“You’re going for personhood when you’re skirting it and you’re only a matter of time,” Book said. People used to think advocates for personhood were hysterical, because they talked about the issue of IVF and the abortion battle. Well, look where we are.
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“Although I have worked diligently to respond to questions and concerns I am aware that there is still more work that needs to be done,” said a Republican state senator. It is important we get the policy right.
“People across the country are talking about it,” Book said. I think at the end of the day, Republicans realize this is a problem. This isn’t something that they should be doing.”
The anti-abortion movement will decide how to react to Republican efforts to sideline it. In Arizona, a candidate for Senate who once called abortion the ultimate sin has now come out against both a federal and an Arizona abortion ban that are currently being fought in court.
On Wednesday, leading figures in the movement, including Lila Rose of Live Action, Marjorie Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Brent Leatherwood of the Southern Baptist Convention, signed a letter to Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama urging her to veto the bill. “Both science and logic have made it clear that embryos must be accorded the same human rights and level of dignity that all other human beings — at every developmental stage of life — are granted,” they wrote.
The Florida Supreme Court is not asking for a fetus to be entitled to a right under the state constitution or abortion law, a professor said. “We were going to go to sympathetic judges like those on the Florida Supreme Court…and ask if it was weird that a fetus was not entitled to a right under the state constitution or abortion law,” she added.