Marshae Jones was five months pregnant when she was arrested for being shot in the stomach.
It was 2019, and Jones got into a fight in the parking lot of a Dollar General just outside of Birmingham, Alabama. It escalated until a woman pulled out a gun and shot her. After being rushed to the hospital, Jones was in stable condition, but the shooting caused her to miscarry.
Jones, then 28 with a young daughter, was arrested. A grand jury returned an indictment for felony manslaughter, stating that Jones “intentionally caused the death” of her fetus “by initiating a fight knowing she was five months pregnant.” She faced 20 years in prison.
Jones spent time in jail, and her name and mug shot were splashed across front pages as the case drew national attention. But the charge was eventually dropped, in part because Alabama’s manslaughter statute prohibits women from being prosecuted for their pregnancy outcomes. Prosecutors also concluded that pursuing charges against Jones was “not in the best interest of justice.”
Vesting fetuses with full legal rights would have unintended and unfair consequences for women like Jones, which prosecutors belatedly realized. But such consequences have been a goal of the anti-abortion movement for years. After this summer’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended nationwide abortion rights, these efforts could endanger any pregnant person in any state that enacts “fetal personhood” laws.
Abortion opponents’ stated motivation for these laws is to ensure severe punishment for patients, providers and anyone else who facilitates the end of a pregnancy in a state where the procedure is banned.
The battle is playing out most dramatically in Georgia. Less than a month after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, the state enacted one of the most extreme abortion restrictions in the country. House Bill 481, or the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, bans abortion after cardiac electrical activity can be detected, usually around six weeks ― a point at which most people don’t yet know they’re pregnant. While several states have even more extreme abortion restrictions, including banning abortion from the point of conception, Georgia’s includes a uniquely terrifying clause: It recognizes an embryo or fetus as a person after six weeks of pregnancy.
The termination, or suspected termination, of a pregnancy after the six-week point could be…
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