After the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 2022, the victory for anti-abortion advocates spurred the pursuit of a long sought-after goal, fetal personhood.

That term is for legislation that asserts that life begins at fertilization and establishes constitutional protection for embryos and fetuses. I spoke recently with law

professor and historian Mary Ziegler about her new book, Personhood, the New Civil War Over

Reproduction. Mary Ziegler, welcome back to the News Hour. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.

So in the book, you write that ending the constitutional right to an abortion was just the first step for this movement.

As you write, quote, for the past 50 years, the priority of the anti-abortion movement has been the recognition of fetal rights.

A goal, as you write, dates back to the 1960s.

Why is that the case? What power does this hold? Well, I think the fight for fetal rights was compelling, of course, in practical terms,

because ending the right to choose abortion has left us in a country where it's very difficult

to enforce abortion bans. It's also worth emphasizing that people in the anti-abortion

movement are not focused solely on abortion. They're also concerned about in vitro fertilization,

about some forms of contraception, even about the way we reason about equality in the United States

more broadly. So the end of Roe v. Wade, I think, for the movement was really just the beginning.

And definitions really matter here, because you note that even within this anti-abortion movement,

there's been some inconsistency. As you write, there are disagreements about what personhood means.

So is there a consensus? How would you define it? If there's no consensus, what does that mean

for what advocates are pushing for?

Well, the common denominator is really a claim that at the moment of fertilization, there is a separate, whole unique human being, and that as a result of this biological status, that person

should have constitutional rights. At the moment in the United States, there's a lot more debate about what it means

to enforce that concept of personhood. In other words, what does it mean to do justice to this

fetus or unborn child? The general consensus in the anti-abortion movement is that it requires,

at the moment, some form of criminalization, whether criminalization of the person who performs an abortion,

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