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Is the Fetus a Person? A Comparison of Policies Across the Fifty States. By Jean Reith Schroedel. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. 256p. $29.95.
Alesha E. Doan, California Polytechnic State University
The conceptual-and legal-division between a woman and a fetus is most recently rooted in the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which established the trimester framework designed to balance a woman's right to privacy with the state's interest in protecting potential life. Prior to Roe, a woman and her fetus were legally viewed as having identical interests because of their biological tie. The trimester framework, however, established a precedent for viewing the maternal-fetal relationship as an adversarial one, where a woman and her fetus have conflicting interests. Indeed, as states demonstrate their willingness to protect fetal health-via restrictions on access to abortion-the fetus is increasingly being viewed as a separate entity that is entitled to protection and recognition as a person. The questions of when and under what conditions a fetus is a person have policy implications beyond the scope of the abortion debate.
Jean Reith Schroedel's Is the Fetus a Person? is a well-researched book that makes a unique contribution to our understanding of reproductive policy. Schroedel examines three seemingly unrelated reproductive policies that are actually linked by the question of fetal personhood-abortion, substance abuse by pregnant women, and third-party fetal killing. While these policies are related, the political rhetoric used to discuss them, and the policy outcomes regulating each, is radically different. Exploring the inconsistencies and differences-within and across states' policies-regarding the legal status of a fetus is the crux of...