Economic Security Programs Should Support Pregnant People and Their Families, Not Promote Harmful “Fetal Personhood” Agenda

Pregnant people with low incomes should have access to economic security programs to help them meet their needs. They should also have the freedom to decide whether and when to have children. However, some states are attaching “fetal personhood” provisions to narrow economic benefits, a strategy legal experts warn would help lay the groundwork for a national abortion ban. Lawmakers should reject these efforts to take away access to essential health care and people’s freedom to make decisions about their bodies, lives, and futures. Instead, lawmakers should meaningfully improve economic security programs that support pregnant people and their families without undermining their reproductive freedom.

Following the Dobbs decision in June 2022, lawmakers in many states with abortion bans or restrictions have introduced legislation that would make fetuses eligible for tax benefits, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash benefits, and child support payments.^[2] These policies are designed to advance the concept of “fetal personhood”— a decades-long effort by the anti-abortion movement to recognize fetuses as “people” under our laws, including the U.S. Constitution.^[3] Experts on the topic believe proponents of “fetal personhood” aim to bring a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which could grant fetuses rights under the 14th Amendment, effectively banning abortion nationwide.^[4]

In addition to the long-game legal strategy, fetal personhood provisions have real-time negative outcomes. Women with low incomes and women of color already experience disproportionate surveillance and criminal prosecutions for pregnancy outcomes. Women have been prosecuted for having abortions, miscarriages, and even for giving birth to healthy babies, if substance use testing after the birth comes back positive.^[5] Fetal personhood provisions in economic security programs make matters worse. These programs require people to disclose their pregnancy status, allowing the state to monitor pregnancies and find out when a pregnancy ends early. The potential harm of this practice impacts everyone but would likely disproportionately impact women with low incomes and women of color.^[6]

States Pushing “Fetal Personhood” Provisions in TANF, Child Support, and Tax Policy Offer Little Economic Assistance to Families

Fetal personhood provisions in economic security programs do nothing to meaningfully improve access to economic benefits. Instead, they contribute to the anti-abortion movement’s efforts to establish a federal abortion ban and monitor and punish people for their pregnancy outcomes. These are examples of ways anti-abortion advocates are advancing fetal personhood provisions in states:

• During state legislative sessions between the Dobbs decision, in 2022, through 2024, 13 states considered 21 tax-related bills that included fetal personhood provisions. Across proposals, lawmakers used similar language to modify the legal definition of a child and equate it with a fetus, including terms such as “unborn child” and any embryo “in utero, at any stage of gestation.” Georgia became the first, and remains the only, state to pass legislation giving tax benefits to fetuses when its abortion ban,^[7] which also extended the income tax deduction for children to fetuses, went into effect after the Dobbs decision.^[8]
• TANF bills implicating fetal personhood count a fetus as a child in determining household size. These bills frame eligibility around the fetus rather than the pregnant person. During state legislative sessions since the Dobbs decision through 2024, Oklahoma enacted one such proposal^[9] and Arizona considered another.^[10] Nebraska has included “unborn children” as members of a TANF household starting in the mother’s third trimester since 2013.^[11]
• During state legislative sessions since the Dobbs decision through 2024, 13 states have considered 24 proposals to grant child support rights for fetuses, one of which was enacted in Georgia in 2022.^[12] Child support bills implicating fetal personhood typically allow a person to seek a child support order any time after “conception.” For example, Kansas considered a bill in 2024 that would have provided child support to an “unborn child,” defined as “a living individual organism of the species homo sapiens, in utero, at any stage of gestation from fertilization to birth.”^[13]

The same states advancing these fetal personhood provisions offer little economic assistance to families. For example, refundable child tax credits are designed to help families with low incomes afford the basics to support their children. However, only one of the 13 states that proposed fetal personhood tax legislation in recent years offers a refundable child tax credit. Among the 11 states that have proposed fetal personhood provisions in child support, only three pass through some amount of child support payments to families participating in TANF.^[14] And the two states that have proposed or enacted TANF fetal personhood provisions have among the lowest TANF benefit amounts nationwide.

In addition to the state trends outlined above, federal lawmakers periodically introduce fetal personhood provisions within these policy areas,^[15] like a recent proposal to extend the federal Child Tax Credit to “unborn children,”^[16] and another that would make “unborn children” eligible for child support payments.^[17] Fetal personhood provisions should be rejected at all levels of government.

Improving Economic Security Programs and Ensuring Access to Reproductive Health Care Would Help All People Thrive

To promote the health and well-being of all people, states should reject fetal personhood provisions. Instead, states should ensure access to reproductive health care, including abortion, and improve economic security programs to help families not just survive, but thrive. To improve policies that provide economic support to families with low incomes, states should:

• Enact and expand refundable and inclusive earned income tax credits (EITCs) and child tax credits for people with low incomes without “fetal personhood” provisions.^[18] Cash received through refundable state tax credits promotes reproductive justice for families with low incomes by providing a measure of financial support to raise their children in healthy and safe environments.^[19] Income from policies like refundable state tax credits is linked with improved women’s health, better birth outcomes, and long-term benefits for children, including better nutrition, better school enrollment, higher academic achievement and educational attainment, and higher earnings into young adulthood.^[20]
• Direct all child support to current and past TANF participants. Custodial families must participate in the child support program to receive TANF cash assistance, but they often don’t get to keep all the child support payments made on their behalf. Custodial families have to sign over their rights to child support payments to the state while they receive cash benefits from TANF.^[21] To date, 28 states and the District of Columbia pass through some amount of child support to families. Child support helps struggling families pay for children’s basic needs, like food, housing, and school supplies.^[22]
• Raise TANF benefit levels and improve the accessibility of their TANF programs for families in need. To help families afford necessities that often can only be met with cash, like food, rent, and utilities, states should increase benefit levels and ensure cash benefits keep pace with inflation over time.^[23] States should also provide supplemental TANF payments for essentials like housing, diapers, and period products, and end punitive policies like family caps that deny additional cash benefits for children born to parents receiving TANF.^[24] In addition, states can help pregnant people access safe housing and healthy food by expanding TANF eligibility to pregnant people without minor children from the beginning of pregnancy; about two-thirds of states currently do.^[25]

To be clear, improved economic security policies are only one piece of what pregnant people and their families need. Everyone must also have access to quality health care services, including abortion care, to live safe and healthy lives.