Purvi Patel is an Indian American woman who, in 2015, was the first U.S. citizen to be convicted under feticide statutes for allegedly attempting her own abortion. Though her 2015 conviction was overturned the same year, the feticide conviction was significant as a legal precedent as well as part of a larger trend criminalizing pregnant women of color. With an eye towards the greater pattern of the criminalization of other pregnant women of color (Boyd, 1999; Faludi, 1991; Humphries, 1999; Mahan, 1996; Roberts, 1997), in this thesis I employ a feminist legal studies methodology and the theoretical frameworks of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) and Reproductive Justice (Ross and Solinger, 2017; Silliman et al., 2004) to analyze five pro-Patel briefs, two from Patel’s appellate lawyers and three from amici curiae. The four themes present are: fetal personhood; racialized gender; medical privacy and trust; and surveillance, knowledge, and legitimacy. I argue these briefs were not always consistent with the tenets of intersectionality and Reproductive Justice, even as the briefs may have been effective in convincing the Court of Appeals to overturn Patel’s conviction. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of Patel’s case for public health and law. I suggest that criminalization of abortion is harmful to public health and that the feticide mandate as it stands now does not do what it was intended to do, which is to protect the pregnant woman from harm.

The purpose of this research is to analyse how gender is ‘done’, represented and reproduced in a Peruvian baby shower ritual. The study is situated geographically in the urban Andean setting of Cusco, and theoretically, in a feminist framework combining an ethnomethodological ‘doing gender’ perspective, anchored in social interactions, with a linguistic performativity approach, as formulated by Judith Butler. In the latter, gender is understood as performed through discursive practices of iterability. The ethnographic material, collected from two baby showers and additional interviews, demonstrate several ways and sites in which gender is done and performed in the Cusqeanean baby shower. This occurs, for instance, by the means of gendered gifts, decorations and performances of gender-crossing and hyperbolised displays of masculinity, femininity and sexuality.             Furthermore, to help make sense of the notions of prenatal gender, as well as the strictly gendered cultural norms for invitation cards, decoration and gift-making, which made me unknowingly brake conventions when bringing gender-neutral wooden toys to a Peruvian baby shower, I draw on theorisation of fetal personhood. Adapting van Gennep’s (2004[1909]) concept, I propose that the baby shower could be conceptualised as a rite of passage, in which the unborn transcends from the state of fetus to a gendered baby. The acts of naming and attributing gender in the baby shower ritual, I argue, are requisites for incorporating the child into the society, as family members and, ultimately, as human beings. The baby shower can, thus, be regarded a crucial site for the ‘social birth’ of the Cusqueanean baby.

A more conservative supreme court will likely have the chance to overrule Roe v. Wade. Many states have passed heartbeat laws that will probably be taken all the way to the supreme court, these cases will ask the supreme court to affirm fetal personhood, giving fetuses a constitutionally recognized right to due process and making abortion illegal. In this thesis, I will defend an expansion of protections for pregnant peoples through a socialized right to abortion.

Submitted by Maria Creuza Silva (mariakreuza@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-04-14T17:34:26Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação. Mariana Ramos Pitta Lima. 2015.pdf: 1479737 bytes, checksum: 7c0a70d47fe34eb6897746d012ce177f (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Creuza Silva (mariakreuza@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-04-18T12:42:34Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação. Mariana Ramos Pitta Lima. 2015.pdf: 1479737 bytes, checksum: 7c0a70d47fe34eb6897746d012ce177f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-18T12:42:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação. Mariana Ramos Pitta Lima. 2015.pdf: 1479737 bytes, checksum: 7c0a70d47fe34eb6897746d012ce177f (MD5) / Este artigo analisa as práticas e os significados em torno da ultrassonografia obstétrica (USG) realizada em mulheres com abortamento em ―MPS‖, uma maternidade pública em Salvador, Bahia, Brasil. Especificamente, explora as noções de Pessoa acionadas pelos sujeitos nas relações com a produção de imagens durante exame de USG, com base na análise de registros de observação participante, durante três meses, na sala em que o exame é realizado. A partir desse enfoque, buscamos identificar as noções de ‗gravidez‘, ‗concepto‘ e ‗feto-pessoa‘ constituídas pelos ecografistas e pelas mulheres com abortamento nas interações observadas. O artigo mostra como a USG ocupa um lugar central no itinerário abortivo das mulheres. Sua realização é uma prática incorporada e definidora de condutas na atenção ao abortamento nesse hospital público da rede SUS. Para os profissionais, todas as usuárias do serviço de USG estudado que chegam com sangramento são suspeitas a priori de terem provocadas um aborto – até provado o contrário. A etnografia revelou que nesse contexto se constitui três categorias distintas de ‗mulheres com aborto‘, cujo acionamento depende da interpretação da imagem ecográfica da condição e do conteúdo do útero. São mulheres com aborto completo, sem qualquer resto embrionário; mulheres com abortamento incompleto com alguns restos; e mulheres com ameaça de aborto com fetos ainda vivos. A forma de significar o estado de saúde e a condição moral de uma mulher com suspeita de aborto se relaciona com a presença ou não de um feto vivo no seu útero, além da idade gestacional em que a suspeita de abortamento ou o aborto aconteceu. Concluímos que, do ponto de vista simbólico, mulheres e profissionais colaboram ao produzir, a partir da interpretação da imagem ecográfica, um conhecimento sobre a gravidez, entendida como um processo que envolve estágios distintos. Quando as evidencias ecográficas indicam que houve (provavelmente) um aborto nos estágios iniciais de uma gravidez, os próprios profissionais colaboram com as mulheres em desativar o processo semiótico que levaria à atribuição de um sentido de natureza humana ao concepto. Por outro lado, quanto mais tarde se interrompeu uma gestação, mais provável é que o processo de significação sobre as imagens sustente a ideia de que ali havia Pessoa. Nesse caso e, sobretudo quando se detectou presença de um feto com vida, mais enfática se torna a condenação moral do ato do abortamento. A moral hegemônica sobre aborto e sua criminalização modulam as construções simbólicas e as práticas em torno do exame de USG em mulheres com abortamento.

abstract: The 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade was a significant event in the story of fetal personhood—the story of whether embryos and fetuses are legal persons. Roe legalized abortion care in the United States (US). However, the story of fetal personhood began long before the 1970s. People have been talking about embryos, fetuses, and their status in science, the law, and society for centuries. I studied the history of fetal personhood in the United States, tracing its origins from Ancient Rome and Medieval England to its first appearance in a US courtroom in 1884 and then to the Supreme Court’s decision in 1973. But this isn’t a history of events—of names and dates and typical details. This is a history of words. In the twenty-first century, words used to discuss embryos and fetuses are split. Some people use humanizing language like “unborn children” and “human life.” Others use technical words like “embryos” and “fetuses.” I studied what words people used historically. I charted how words moved from science to the public to the law, and how they impacted court rulings on fetal personhood. The use of certain words nudged courts to grant additional rights to embryos and fetuses. In the 1960s, writers began describing the science of development, using words like “unborn child” and humanizing descriptions to make embryos and fetuses seem like people already born. That helped build an idea of embryos and fetuses as having “life” before birth. When people began asking courts to legalize abortion care in the 1970s, attorneys on the opposite side argued that embryos and fetuses were “human life,” and that that “life” began at conception. In those cases, “life” was biologically defined as when sperm fertilized egg, but it was on that biological definition “life” that judges improperly rested their legal rulings that embryos and fetuses were “potential human life” states had a duty to protect. It wasn’t legal personhood, but it was a legal status that let states pass laws restricting abortion care and punishing pregnant people for their behavior, trends that threaten people’s lives and autonomy in the twenty-first century. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biology 2020

Presumptive fertility is an ideology that leads us to treat not only pregnant women, but all female patients of reproductive age, with the presumption that they could be pregnant. This preoccupation with the possibility that a woman could be pregnant compels medical and social interventions that have adverse consequences on women’s lived experiences. It is important to pause now to examine this ideology. Despite our social realities -- there is a patient centered care movement in medical practice, American women are delaying and forgoing childbearing, abortion is safe and legal -- there is still a powerful medical and social process that subjugates womens’ bodies and lived experiences to their potential of being a mother. Fetoconsciousness, preoccupation with the fetus or hypothetical, not-yet-conceived, fetus privileges its potential embodiment over its mother’s reality. As a set of values that influence our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, the ideology of presumptive fertility is contextualized, critiqued, and challenged. / Urban Bioethics

This thesis explores the way popular culture imitates and reinforces a sentimentalized reading of sonogram images that has been established by the conservative Right as the proper way to view this image. It analyzes several popular culture texts to expose the way their use of sonogram images personifies the fetus. It aims to problematize the way this image has become a symbol of fetal personhood and initiate a discussion about our roles as consumers of popular culture and images. Finally, it connects the use of this image to recent legislation surrounding mandatory ultrasounds and personhood initiatives, and argues that the public’s acceptance of fetal personhood is dangerous for women’s personhood and citizenship.