On Making s: Ideographs of Legal Hood

Abstract

The most recent campaign within the prolife movement attempts to enact laws that would confer <person>hood upon the unborn. A strategy initiated by Colorado-based group Personhood USA, <person>hood laws have been introduced (sometimes repeatedly) in multiple states. The <person> hood strategy operates according to the reasoning that if the fetus is a legal <person>, then the Constitution gives that <person> legal rights and privileges from the moment of conception. Fetal <person>hood laws thus represent a new ideograph used by the prolife movement in an attempt to give the fetus legal presence. Previous prolife advocacy relied upon the <life> ideograph, a public address ideograph, allowed for the restriction of abortion, but not its termination. The <person> ideograph, a legal ideograph, has the potential to end abortion. Although at present the law largely does not recognize fetal <person>s, legislation and judicial opinions have been introduced that would grant <person> hood status to the fetus.