Cases from across the country prove that if the unborn are recognized as legal persons with separate human rights, the government will have the power to deprive pregnant women of their rights to informed consent, due process, liberty, and even life.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a pre-election series

featuring leading voices in sexual and reproductive health advocacy,

showing how shared American values underpin their support for sexual

and reproductive health, rights, and justice. Read them all here.

This summer, the question of abortion and the rights of the

unborn once again took center stage as a presidential campaign issue. In

August, at the Saddleback Civil Forum, Pastor Rick Warren asked both

presidential candidates: "At what point is a baby entitled to human

rights?" Senator John McCain’s answer,

"at the moment of conception," immediately established his anti-abortion bona

fides.

But the right answer, as a matter of international human rights principles and simple justice,

is: human rights attach at birth, not at conception.

This is the only position that ensures that upon becoming

pregnant, women do not lose their

human rights.

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Cases from across the country prove that if the unborn are

recognized as legal persons with separate human rights, the government will

have the power to deprive pregnant women of their rights to informed consent,

due process, liberty, and even life – without any guarantee that the interests

of the unborn will in fact be protected.

After Ayesha Madyun’s water broke, she went to

the hospital where she hoped and planned to have a vaginal birth. When she

didn’t give birth in a time-frame comfortable to her doctors, they argued that

she should have Cesarean surgery. The doctors asserted that the fetus faced a

50-75 percent chance of infection if not delivered surgically. (Risks of

infection are believed by some health care providers to increase with each hour

after a woman’s water has broken and she hasn’t delivered.) The court

said, "[a]ll that stood between the Madyun fetus and its independent

existence, separate from its mother, was put simply, a doctor’s scalpel."

The court granted the order; the scalpel sliced through Ms. Madyun. After the delivery, there was no evidence of

infection and no evidence that any human rights were advanced – for the born or

unborn.

Relying on fetal rights arguments, authorities in Utah arrested a woman

for murder because she delayed a C-section causing, the state alleged, the

stillbirth of one of her twins.

Other women have been charged with

homicide based on the claim that the stillbirths they suffered were caused by

an illegal drug they took. Recently, a unanimous South Carolina Supreme Court had to overturn

Regina McKnight’s conviction for homicide by child abuse. After Ms. McKnight

had served more than eight years in prison, the court finally recognized that

her conviction had been based on "outdated" research and that her trial counsel

had failed to call experts who would have testified about "recent studies

showing that cocaine is no more harmful to a fetus than nicotine use, poor

nutrition, lack of prenatal care, or other conditions commonly associated with

the urban poor."

At least fifteen

to twenty percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage or stillbirth. Certainly, human rights are not advanced by

creating a legal basis for treating miscarriages and stillbirths as murder.

Laura Pemberton wanted to have a vaginal birth after a

previous delivery by Cesarean surgery. Because no hospital would admit her

unless she agreed to deliver again by surgery, she stayed home to give birth.

While there, in active labor and near delivery, an armed Sheriff knocked on her

door. He had orders to take her into custody. He strapped her legs together and

brought her to a hospital to determine whether she could be forced to have the Cesarean surgery. A lawyer was appointed for the fetus, but not for Ms.

Pemberton. Ms. Pemberton vehemently opposes abortion, but she nevertheless

believed in her right to evaluate medical risks and benefits to herself and her

unborn child. She was forced to have the unnecessary surgery. When she later

sued for violations of her civil rights, was told she had none.

My organization, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, is documenting

hundreds of cases in which fetal rights have been used to justify denying human

rights to women who have no intention of ending their pregnancies. If the unborn

are granted human rights, courts will have jurisdiction over pregnant women

whenever someone disagrees with their decisions to undergo chemotherapy, to

continue taking anti-depressants, to continue working, to drink any amount of

alcohol, to chose vaginal birth over Cesarean surgery and even if what the

pregnant woman wants is, simply, to live.

At 27 years old and 25 weeks pregnant Angela Carder became

critically ill. The hospital called an emergency hearing to determine the

rights of the fetus. Despite testimony that a Cesarean section could kill Ms.

Carder, the court ordered the surgery because the fetus had independent legal

rights. As a result, Ms. Carder not only lost her right to informed consent and

bodily integrity; she lost her life. The surgery resulted in the death of both Ms.

Carder and her fetus.

Ms. Carder’s case makes clear that the issue is not choice

versus life, but life vs. life – that is whether the government should have the

power to privilege fetal rights over maternal life.

Political

candidates of all persuasions should rest assured that to oppose the

recognition of human rights before birth is not to deny the value of potential

life as matter of religious belief, emotional conviction or personal

experience. Rather, it is to recognize the value of the women who give that

life.

It is to recognize that there are not two different kinds of women: those who have

abortions and those who have babies. Sixty-one percent of women who have

abortions are already mothers. Over the course of their lives, 85 percent of

all women bring life into this world and provide the majority of care for that

life.

These women – all of them, whether they oppose or support

legal abortion – struggle with U.S. policies that run counter to women’s health

and family well being. They are pregnant women who lack protection from

workplace discrimination. They are parents and caretakers who lack economic and

social supports available to women in virtually every other western

industrialized country, like a national health care system and paid maternity

leave.

And, whether they define themselves as "pro-life" or

"pro-choice," most women believe, and justice demands, that they do not lose their human rights at

the moment they conceive.