Many of these prosecutions originate in laws initially designed to build in extra penalties when pregnant women are victims of a crime. Fetal-homicide laws, for example, which are on the books in 39 states, have often been passed in response to a brutal killing. Alabama’s fetal-homicide law is known as the Brody Bill, named after the fetus who died in the 2005 murder of his mother, Brandy Parker. But treating women and their fetuses as separate persons under the law can have unexpected consequences. A woman in Indiana, Bei Bei Shuai, is now in prison for a suicide attempt that resulted in the death of her fetus. Three years ago in Mississippi, Rennie Gibbs had a stillbirth shortly after turning 16. When her baby tested positive for cocaine, she was charged with a “depraved heart murder,” the legal term for a killing with “a callous disregard for human life,” which in Mississippi carries a life sentence without possibility of parole until the age of 65. The Mississippi State Supreme Court, after initially agreeing to weigh in on the case, abruptly reconsidered, saying Gibbs should stand trial before it would rule on whether the law applies to pregnant women. Alabama’s fetal-homicide law exempts pregnant women.

Measures that specifically define fetuses as persons have failed in every state in which they have been introduced (Colorado voters rejected fetal-personhood initiatives twice), but Mason, the founder of Personhood USA, told me that he isn’t deterred. The goal, he said, is to raise awareness, much as gay marriage advocates, with whom he disagrees, have done with their campaigns. “The more we raise the issue, the more we change the culture,” he said. Troy Newman, president of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, agrees, in part, saying: “Is it a winning strategy? Obviously not. They’ve spent millions of dollars in at least two different states running initiatives, and they’ve all failed miserably.” On the other hand, laws like chemical endangerment, he says, could ultimately get the anti-abortion movement where it wants to go. “Look,” he says, “we win every time we establish the precedent that the unborn child in the womb is a unique human individual.”

Mathew D. Staver, the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, who helped get fetal personhood on the ballot in Mississippi, recently filed an amicus brief with the State Supreme Court supporting the state’s case against Ankrom. Staver told me by phone that “it’s clear that history has sided with the idea that life begins in the womb. The only aberration is Roe v. Wade. Abortion laws are an island unto themselves, and that island is gradually shrinking.”

But the expansion of fetal-homicide and chemical-endangerment laws have some people on the other side of the debate reaching for their copies of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel in which women are enslaved as childbearers.

“We’re heading toward this Margaret Atwood-like society,” Ketteringham says. “The idea that the state needs to threaten and punish women so that they do the right thing during pregnancy is appalling. Everyone talks about the personhood of the fetus, but what’s really at stake is the personhood of women. It starts with the use of an illegal drug, but what happens as a consequence of that precedent is that everything a woman does while she’s pregnant becomes subject to state regulation.

“It starts with cocaine, and then it’s cigarettes and alcohol. How much alcohol? And when? It’s only a matter of time until it comes to refusing a bed-rest order because you need to work and take care of your other children and then you have a miscarriage. What if you stay at a job where you’re exposed to toxic chemicals, as at a dry cleaner? What if you keep taking your S.S.R.I.’s during pregnancy? If a woman is told that sex during her pregnancy could be a risk to the fetus, and the woman has sex anyway and miscarries, are you going to prosecute the woman — and the man too?”

“[The fetus] is another human being, just like we are,” Scofield, the state senator, says. “I look at the tens of millions of good mothers who make the right decisions. My mother, for instance, smoked forever. The day she found out she was pregnant with me, she put down her cigarettes for the last time. If we turn our back on this, we say to all these good mothers who have made good decisions that it’s meaningless to society to be a good mother or a good father.”