Unborn Fictions: Fetal Persons and Their Women Containers.
What do anti‐abortion proponents need to claim to make "unborn children" come alive as legal persons, in active conflict with, or even favored over, pregnant persons? This article begins to answer these questions, beginning by showing how artificial, corporate personhood became part of a powerful se...
| Publicado en: | Public Culture Vol. 37; no. 3; pp. 285 - 306 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Duke University Press
Sep2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=194203504&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 194203504 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 08992363 6Z1 jtl: Public Culture issn: 08992363 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Sep2025 vid: 37 iid: 3 pid: 154 pub: Duke University Press artinfo: ui: 194203504 10.1215/08992363-12175735 ppf: 285 ppct: 21 formats: tig: atl: Unborn Fictions: Fetal Persons and Their Women Containers. aug: au: Siraganian, Lisa su: Unborn children (Law) Fetus Metaphor Rhetoric Genetic code sug: subj: Unborn children (Law) Fetus Metaphor Rhetoric Genetic code keyword: abortion DNA fetus personhood unborn ab: What do anti‐abortion proponents need to claim to make "unborn children" come alive as legal persons, in active conflict with, or even favored over, pregnant persons? This article begins to answer these questions, beginning by showing how artificial, corporate personhood became part of a powerful set of strategies that attempted to secure the ground for fetal rights. As theorized by anti‐abortion activists, "the unborn" (modeled on corporate persons) are rendered perfectly equal to the women who must bear them, while necessarily lacking status or publicness. Given the moniker of "unborn child" or simply "life," they are reduced to genetic code. Each section explores how these rhetorical and analytical tools work both individually and in concert. Women are theorized as mere property — as containers — reduced to their bodily and natural destiny. More recently, human DNA has been reframed as the evidence of ensoulment, a way of making legal, moral persons out of unique genetic material. This rhetorical technique provides anti‐abortion thinkers a way to bypass the long‐standing religious and legal tradition of "quickening" as the moment when the fetus gains its soul and thus becomes a person. Altogether, a new quasi‐legal entity can be rhetorically, performatively "born": the so‐called unborn child. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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