Alabama IVF ruling puts spotlight on state plans for tax breaks and child support for fetuses

TOPEKA, Kan. — The Alabama Supreme Court’s recent ruling that frozen embryos are legally protected children highlights how support for the idea that a fetus should have the same rights as a person underlies much less dramatic laws and proposals from abortion foes in the US.

Lawmakers in at least six states have proposed measures similar to a Georgia law that would allow women to claim child support starting at conception to cover the costs of a pregnancy. Georgia also allows expectant parents to claim the income tax deduction for dependent children before birth. Utah introduced a maternity tax credit last year, and variations on the measures are before lawmakers in at least four other states.

Including legislation that would make harming or killing a fetus a crime, several dozen proposals are pending in at least 15 states that fall under the broad umbrella of promoting fetus personhood, according to an Associated Analysis Press using the account tracking software Plural.

The Alabama court’s ruling underscored the anti-abortion movement’s longstanding goal of providing embryos and fetuses with legal and constitutional protections comparable to those afforded to the women who carry them. But abortion rights advocates see that proposals that provide even limited protections for embryos and fetuses have potentially broader implications.

“Any law that applies to a human could then be applied to fetuses,” said Melissa Murray, a professor at New York University School of Law. “The whole range of statutory law and constitutional law is available.”

Opponents of abortion argue that proposals on income taxes or child benefits — or state support for anti-abortion centers that provide services during pregnancy and after birth — are motivated by compassion for vulnerable women and girls. The aid could convince some not to end their pregnancies, abortion opponents argue, but their tax and child benefit proposals would also help women and girls who never consider abortion.

“The main goal is just to provide support to mothers and families who need additional support here, and then provide support to those who are also helping them, like the pregnancy resource centers,” said Lucrecia Nold, who lobbies for the Kansas Catholic Conference . .

A Kansas House committee held a hearing on the child allowance proposal earlier this month, and a bill to allow prospective parents to claim the $2,250 dependent income tax deduction before the birth of a child is before a House committee. Senate. Lawmakers are expected to discuss both in the coming weeks.

Kansas is an outlier among states with Republican-controlled legislatures because of a 2019 Supreme Court decision declaring that the Kansas Constitution protects access to abortion as a matter of a fundamental right to bodily autonomy. Lawmakers put an amendment on the ballot to explicitly declare that the Constitution does not grant a right to abortion — allowing them to sharply restrict or ban the procedure — but voters decisively rejected it in August 2022. It was the first of seven state votes to affirm the proceedings. abortion rights following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which allows states to ban abortion.

But Kansas also has had a law since 2007 that allows people to be charged separately for crimes against fetuses, including murder, vehicular homicide and battery, and this law has not yet been challenged. A 2013 state law states that life begins at conception and that “unborn children have interests in life, health and welfare that must be protected,” but it is not imposed as a restriction on abortion.

Brittany Jones, an attorney and policy director for Kansas Family Voice, which opposes abortion and sought the child support measure, said the Supreme Court did not care about these laws when it ruled in 2019.

“This freakout — that we’re trying to do something legally unique — is just hysterical,” she said. “We believe that the mother and the child both have value. I won’t run away from that; that’s true.”

In questioning the motives of abortion opponents to pursue more limited measures on child support or income taxes, abortion rights advocates argue that these do not represent meaningful relief for pregnant women or their families.

At this month’s Kansas House committee hearing, abortion providers argued that if the state wants to help them, they should consider expanding social services, including Medicaid; improve access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive care; or provide paid family leave. The state’s budget division projected that nearly 21,000 additional income tax filers would be able to claim the dependent deduction, but the average savings would be about $91 each.

Elisabeth Smith, director of state policy and advocacy for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which fights for abortion access, called such measures “window dressing” and said she and the Alabama Supreme Court ruling are part of a coordinated anti-abortion campaign in the USA

“This is absolutely part of the anti’s long campaign to perpetuate the abortion stigma and normalize that an embryo and a fetus are equal to a living, breathing human being walking around,” Smith said.

But Mary Zieger, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who has published six books since 2015 on the national abortion debate and its history, said states’ fetal personhood measures could also sway the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority to consider whether the rights of the United States Constitution apply to fetuses and embryos by reason of history or tradition.

“And then they’ll say, ‘Look, there are all these states taking this position too,’” she said.

In Alabama, voters in 2018 amended the state constitution to declare that the state’s public policy is to “ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child.” Judges cited this provision in separate opinions on frozen embryos.

Broad fetal personhood proposals are pending in at least four states, and Vermont has one that would grant rights to fetuses in the 24th week of pregnancy, although this is unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Legislature accepted.

Ziegler, who is working on a book about the push for fetal rights, said such broad measures would likely be unpopular with voters who want to protect access to abortion or in vitro fertilization for women who have trouble conceiving.

She said abortion foes are trying to find “unicorn laws” that promote fetus personhood without “actually angering voters.”

“There’s a longer game being played here, in that the goal is ultimately some kind of federal recognition of the personhood of the fetus,” she said.

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Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.