US supreme court declines to take up fetal personhood case

The US supreme court on Tuesday refused to rule on whether fetuses are people and therefore have constitutional rights, dealing a blow to two women and a Catholic church that filed a lawsuit against the state of Rhode Island.

In May, the Rhode Island supreme court ruled that the word “person” does not apply to the unborn. But that ruling cited Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which guaranteed the right to abortion and which the US supreme court overturned in June.

The Rhode Island ruling read, in part: “The unborn plaintiffs fail to assert a legally cognizable and protected interest as persons pursuant to these repealed statutes, which are contrary to the United States constitution as construed by the United States supreme court.”

Since then, however, with the fall of Roe, Republican-run states across the US have passed abortion bans of varying strictness.

In September, a petition requested the supreme court of Rhode Island approve a writ of certiorari, which would pave the way for petitioning the decision of the lower case concerning fetal personhood.

The petitioners cited Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that conservatives on the US supreme court, who form a 6-3 majority, used to overturn Roe v Wade.

“The questions presented are pointed and inevitable, in light of Dobbs,” the petitioners wrote. “The record here presents all that is necessary to resolve the unfinished business left by Dobbs. Now is the time.”

The petitioners also said the supreme court “should grant the writ to finally determine whether prenatal life, at any gestational age, enjoys constitutional protection – considering the full and comprehensive history and tradition of our constitution and law supporting personhood for unborn human beings”.

But on Tuesday, the court decided not to take the case. It did so without offering comments.