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This is Fresh Air, I'm Tanya Mosley.

Abortion is now on the ballot in Florida.

Voters will decide in November whether to enshrine abortion rights into its Constitution.

Now, this comes after Florida Supreme Court ruled this week

that the state's Constitution does not protect abortion

and this removed the barriers for a separate six-week ban that will take effect next

month. This ruling has also primed abortion opponents to seek broad fetal personhood protections.

Now you've probably been hearing that phrase a lot lately.

Over the last year, lawmakers in nearly a dozen states have considered efforts to give legal rights and

protections to embryos and fetuses, everything from income tax deductions

to giving a fetus the right to child support.

And in some cases, these proposed rights

outstrip those given to pregnant people.

The longstanding effort is an outgrowth of decades

of anti-abortion organizing, rights journalist Carter Sherman.

The latest ruling happened in February when the Alabama Supreme Court decided that frozen

embryos used in in vitro fertilization have the same rights as children. Carter Sherman covers reproductive

health and justice for the guardian.

Previously she worked as a senior reporter advice News where she focused on reproductive rights,

sexual violence, and LGBTQ plus rights. Carter Sherman, welcome to Fresh Air.

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