We are all familiar with the American Taliban's tactic of passing "personhood" bills in state legislatures in an attempt to eliminate women's reproductive rights and make abortions and birth control illegal.
For example:
North Dakota's HB 1572, otherwise known as the Personhood of Children Act, was a bill in the North Dakota Legislature which aimed to "provide equality and rights to all human beings at every stage of biological development". This step could eventually eliminate all types of induced abortion for nearly any reason in the state of North Dakota.
The purpose and effect of personhood laws:
Prenatal personhood measures would--and are intended to--completely and absolutely ban abortion, with no exceptions. Many of these measures would also effectively ban common forms of contraception and restrict or even ban assisted reproductive technologies such as IVF.
Moreover, the legal impact of prenatal personhood measures extends far beyond banning abortion and other forms of reproductive health care. Because extending legal rights to fetuses could criminalize any conduct that might harm a fetus, a prenatal personhood law could chill doctors from providing the best medical care to pregnant women.... Physicians would similarly be at risk for helping a woman experiencing a miscarriage because they could be criminally prosecuted for harming the embryo or fetus.
Further, a prenatal personhood measure might subject a woman who suffers a pregnancy-related complication or a miscarriage to criminal investigations and possibly jail time for homicide, manslaughter or reckless endangerment. And because so many laws use the terms "persons" or "people," a prenatal personhood measure could affect large numbers of a state's laws, changing the application of thousands of laws and resulting in unforeseeable, unintended, and absurd consequences.
But how can you extend legal rights to a person who is not a U.S. citizen?
These are the qualifications to be a U.S. citizen:
U.S. citizenship can be obtained in one of four ways:
birth in the United States or its territories
birth to U.S. citizen parents (called "acquisition" of citizenship)
naturalization (obtaining citizenship after an application and exam), or
naturalization of one's parents (called "derivation" of citizenship).
A fetus is not born.
A fetus cannot submit an application or take an exam.
So how does a fetus have any rights if it does not have U.S. citizenship, which is controlled by the Constitution, not state law?