The 'wrongful death' suit could usher in a new threat for abortion providers and women nationwide.
Villegas’ lawyer, J. Stanley Martineau, doesn’t dispute that she signed paperwork consenting to the abortion. He argues her consent wasn’t informed because, among other technical faults, the clinic’s paperwork didn’t use the phrase “unborn child” when describing the embryo, as Arizona’s informed consent statute does. “If you interpret [the statute] literally, any slip-up in what kind of information you give is going to create a potential liability,” Martineau says.
“This case was brought against the abortion provider, but it is required that the pregnant person, the ex-partner, be a witness in this case,” says Dana Sussman, deputy executive director for the National Advocates for Pregnant Women. Sussman worries that future litigants could use a similar strategy — suing for wrongful death — but go even further, by targeting the woman herself.
Today, eleven states, including Arizona, have broad laws that have redefined the term “person” to include a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus, paving the way for cases like the one Mario Villegas filed. Before thedecision, federal protections for abortion acted as a kind of guardrail against some of the most extreme interpretations of those laws. But “withoutas a fundamental constitutional right,” NAPW’s Sussman says, “we are now starting to grapple with what exactly these laws mean in practice.
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