On Tuesday, the New York Times published a guest essay that argued an abortion and a miscarriage should be considered similar in light of growing abortion restrictions.
The piece, penned by law professors Greer Donley and Jill Wieber Lens, focused on discussing what the impact of ending Roe v. Wade could have on miscarriages. While several states have enacted or proposed abortion bans in response to Roe’s end, Donley and Wieber suggested that these laws could affect all pregnancy care.
Perceived differences between the two treatments, Donley and Lens claim, come from "the anti-abortion movement."
"The line between abortion and pregnancy loss has always been blurry. But over the past few decades, the anti-abortion movement has forged a cultural bright line between the two experiences, promoting dueling narratives of ‘bad’ mothers who voluntarily cause fetal death versus ‘good’ mothers who grieve unpreventable pregnancy loss," they wrote.
"Pregnancy loss and abortion have more in common than many people realize," they wrote, noting that the same drugs and procedures as abortion can be utilized after a miscarriage and comparing the "stigma and isolation" faced afterwards as similar.
Donley and Lens acknowledged that abortion defenders have also "widened the divide," but they argued that only it came after the pro-life movement decided to "weaponize grief" from mourning mothers to counter abortion rights.
"Today, though, abortion and pregnancy loss are generally perceived as two different things — at least in part because of anti-abortion strategy. Decades ago, the anti-abortion movement realized that it could weaponize grief after pregnancy loss to suggest the callousness of abortion and to promote the concept of fetal personhood. As that movement moved aggressively to give fetuses rights in a variety of legal contexts as a way to undermine abortion rights — again, often capitalizing on grief after pregnancy loss — the abortion-rights movement reflexively opposed these measures," they wrote.
The article added that the abortion rights movement denying the idea of "fetal attachment" hurt their cause. While it was feared that "Any concession of fetal value could be used to chip away at abortion rights," the authors concluded, "It does not damage the movement to admit that some people become attached to their children in utero and that attachment has value."
They proposed, "If we ground fetal value in the pregnant woman’s attachment and commit to defending her conception of the pregnancy, we can recognize loss without threatening abortion rights."
"This conception of subjective fetal value is fundamentally inconsistent with the anti-abortion concept of fetal value, which equates a fertilized egg with a breathing baby from the moment of conception for every pregnancy. Fetal value erases the pregnant person’s perspective. We must offer an alternative that rests on real experiences with pregnancy," Donley and Lens wrote before ultimately concluding that abortion supporters need to ally with "the pregnancy loss community" to become "formidable."
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The New York Times has published several op-eds and guest essays from people defending abortion rights after the end of Roe v. Wade.
The Sunday after the Dobbs case was released, guest essayist Michele Goodwin compared the Supreme Court decision to slavery and "forced reproduction."
