"My Fetus Pleads the Fifth"

ANTI-CHOICE forces were eager to declare a major victory when the United States Supreme Court upheld a restrictive Missouri abortion law this summer.

When they looked at the high court's decision, opponents of abortion saw it as the first step towards a reversal of the decision to legalize abortion handed down 16 years ago.

But when Lovetta Farrar of Kansas City looked at the decision, she saw something different--a ticket out of prison.

Most of the scrutiny of the Court's decision has rested on the parts dealing with abortions in public hospitals and with the trimester system. But the Court may have made more of a long-term impact not by what it addressed, but by what it chose not to address in the ruling.

The preamble to the Missouri abortion law upheld by the Court declares explicitly that life begins at the moment of conception. The state institutionalized "fetus rights" into its law code, and the Supreme Court chose not to strike it down.

It was part of the Court's ruling on which Farrar pinned her hopes. She is serving a prison term for forgery. She is pregnant.

If a fetus is a person under Missouri law, isn't her unborn child being imprisoned without due process, in violation of the 13th Amendment?

FARRAR'S answer was an emphatic "yes," and she filed a suit in federal district court saying her fetus was being held without charges, trial, access to counsel or a sentence.

"The fetus should be treated as a person and should not be put in prision without a trial," the woman's attorney, Michael S. Box, told The New York Times. "The fetus should not serve a sentence for a mother."

Prior to the high court's ruling this summer, such a suit would have seemed frivolous and hopeless. But it is a measure of how far we've come--or, more accurately, how far backwards we've slid--that such ridiculous legal action could now stand a reasonable chance of success.

To some, abstract discussions of when life begins might have seemed academic. But Farrar's suit is the first sign that it could have material effects on people's lives.

The flip-side of the case is an opening for a dangerous intrusion of state power into women's lives. If a fetus has the rights of a person, then the mother could legally be held to certain duties.

If a fetus is a person, shouldn't states pass laws regulating pregnant mothers health? Smoking or poor eating habits could be interpreted as parental negligence.

No one would argue that a mother should not take care of herself during pregancy. But it would be dangerous for the state to mandate a certain regimen for pregnant women. We do not need further intrusion of the state into our everyday lives.

Farrar's suit, ludicrous as it is, points out a major fallacy in pro-life dogma. How can Farrar's unborn child have the right to get out of state prison when it is trapped in a biological one? A fetus is by definition imprisoned. It has no freedom of motion or decision-making power. It is part of its mother's body.

That's why state attempts to protect a fetus--or "unborn person," as Missouri now mandates--are really attempts to interfere with women's control over their bodies.

If the state does not allow a woman to be sovereign over her own body, she will never attain equal status in society. Without that fundamental right, no other is safe.