John Oliver explains how fetal personhood becomes a pretext for criminalizing women

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Women who have experienced miscarriages have been charged with abuse of a corpse. One woman was forced to have a Zoom hearing from her hospital bed after she refused to have a C-section. But of course this issue is not just about punishment but about control, too. In many states, as Oliver explains, pregnant women may be drug-tested during doctor’s appointments without their knowledge, and there have been cases of false positives—once from a woman eating an everything bagel—that have led to custody battles. This issue has also extended to pausing IVF, since every fertilized egg is considered a person. 

“I know this story has been bleak and very scary,” says Oliver at the end of the segment. “If you are pregnant and live somewhere where you’re vulnerable to the legal perils that you’ve seen tonight, you should know that organizations like Pregnancy Justice and If When How run legal helplines that you can contact… I hate that that is necessary, but we are where we are. And with any luck, we won’t stay here for long.”