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Beyond Abortion: Why The Personhood Movement Implicates Reproductive Choice, Jonathan Will

Journal Articles

In 2008, an amendment was proposed to the Colorado Constitution that sought to attach the rights and protections associated with legal “personhood” to any human being from the moment of fertilization. Although the initiative was defeated, it sparked a nation-wide Personhood Movement that has spurred similar efforts at the federal level and in over a dozen states. Personhood advocates choose terms like “fertilization,” or phrases such as “human being at any stage of development,” to identify the “person”-defining moment in the reproductive process, and these designations have profound implications for reproductive choice. Proponents are outspoken in their desire to outlaw …