The Rise of the Fetal-Personhood Claim in the Anti-Abortion Movement

“I believe this is the civil-rights violation of our lifetime.” In a startling new investigation, Sarah Stillman reports on the people who are neglected and starving to death in prison—and the private companies and government officials behind the crisis. But, first, Margaret Talbot explores the debate about whether an embryo is entitled to Constitutional rights. Plus:

Illustration by Golden Cosmos

Illustration by Golden Cosmos

Abortions aren’t stopping any time soon—indeed, the number of abortions performed in the U.S. actually rose from 2020 to 2023, after the constitutional right to the procedure was eliminated. It’s “not what activists were looking for when they campaigned to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Margaret Talbot writes, in a review of a new book about fetal personhood, a major focal point of the fractious anti-abortion movement. In “Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction,” Mary Ziegler, a law professor and a leading historian of reproductive politics, traces the back-and-forth of the legislative debate, showing how the argument for personhood is both malleable and strategically deployed. Read Margaret Talbot on what the future of the debate might be »


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Illustration by Adam Maida

Illustration by Adam Maida

Starved in Jail

Why are incarcerated people dying from lack of food or water, even as private companies are paid millions for their care? Sarah Stillman investigates »

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“No need to worry about our retirement funds—have you seen what these Trader Joe’s tote bags are reselling for?”

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P.S. Meta’s antitrust trial begins today, litigating whether its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp created a social-media monopoly. When Mark Zuckerberg testified before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees in 2018, Nathan Heller wrote a poem about it: “Zuck took some blame but all the rest denied. / He was extremely bullish on A.I.”

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