On April 7, Lynn Paltrow, attorney and founder of National Advocates for Pregnant Women — now called Pregnancy Justice — delivered a talk at Smith College titled, “Who Counts as a Person?: Women, Wombs, and Executive Disorders.” The talk, hosted by the Smith Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality department, focused on the legal and political framing of abortion, pregnancy and personhood in the United States.
“Raise your hand if you know somebody who’s been pregnant,” Paltrow began by asking. The entire audience, including members of the public and Smith students and faculty, raised their hands. Paltrow used this moment to argue that though pregnancy is central to being human, it is ignored in legal discourse.
Despite making up a large portion of the population, Paltrow says people who are or can get pregnant are treated as second-class citizens, with abortion laws increasingly criminalizing the behavior of pregnant people since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, a 1973 Supreme Court case which established a constitutional right to abortion in the United States.
“If every time men had sex, they risked death,” Paltrow said, quoting Cher, “they’d expect a choice in the matter.” Paltrow highlighted that laws rarely account for the health risks, physical toll, or economic impact of forced pregnancy. Instead, she says, legal arguments frequently rely on fetal rights while sidelining those of the pregnant person.
Paltrow uses Supreme Court cases like Doe v. Bolton and Michael M. v. Superior Court to show a selective recognition of pregnancy’s burdens in law. In Doe, she notes, a married couple was denied standing to challenge abortion laws because potential pregnancy was deemed “too hypothetical.” Yet, she argues that in Michael M., the court invoked these same burdens to justify sex discrimination against males, equating the possibility of pregnancy to the risk of a four-year jail sentence.
“There’s no way to regulate abortion without regulating the people who have abortions,” Paltrow said, “and we have to stop limiting our conversations to the particular thing of abortion when we’re talking about the people who are pregnant.”
Paltrow noted a surge in arrests tied to pregnancy outcomes since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned federal abortion protections. “In almost 30 years, [there were] 413 arrests,” she said, citing a recent report from Pregnancy Justice, the organization she founded to fight pregnancy criminalization. Since Dobbs, she says there have been “over 1300 more arrests of women that are justified by something about what they did or didn’t do while living and being pregnant.”
These arrests include cases where women were incriminated for missing doctors appointments, engaging in sexual activity, or even having miscarriages. This criminalization, Paltrow argued, is a direct result of the state’s increasing control over pregnant bodies, which make normal actions of life potentially criminal. Paltrow also pointed out how the criminalization of pregnancy disproportionately affects poor women and women of color.
As the conversation turned to recent shifts in U.S. politics, Paltrow addressed the rhetoric surrounding Dobbs and its implications. She argued that the decision marks a significant erosion of civil rights, noting that it not only attacks reproductive rights but threatens bodily autonomy itself.
“I am for saying that everyone is a person, that we are persons and that we are not going to talk about whether the fetuses are persons,” Paltrow said. “We should be talking about [how] we are.”
In closing, Paltrow stressed the importance of continued activism and community engagement. She noted the importance of collective power in achieving social change, pointing to grassroots movements and organizations such as The Beacon, which have mobilized community members by fostering closeness and inclusivity.
“When we fight, we win,” Paltrow said, urging attendees to be involved in the movement for reproductive justice. “One candle in the darkness makes a difference.”
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