Ms. Valenti continues to be my go-to source as I want to keep up with the continued attacks on women’s body autonomy across the country.
Republicans Want to Change the Definition of Abortion
Jessica Valenti and Kylie Cheung
Mar 04, 2026
Tennessee GOP Using AI Bill to Codify Fetal Personhood
This is wild: Rachel Wells at TN Repro News flags that Tennessee Republicans have introduced a bill (HB 0849) that would redefine personhood as beginning at fertilization—and they’re doing it through an AI regulation bill.Fetal personhood is already written into Tennessee abortion regulations and criminal code, but as Wells points out, this legislation would establish personhood in the state’s Title 1 definitions. “That means, if passed, this phrase could be used as a legal framework throughout the Tennessee code,” she writes.
They really are coming up with some new nonsense every day.
Republicans Want to Change the Definition of Abortion
While we’re on the topic of Republicans futzing with language, let’s talk about the latest legislative trend: anti-abortion lawmakers in multiple states are trying to change the definition of ‘abortion’.Longtime readers know that I’ve spent years tracking this tactic: in 2023, I warned in The New York Times that anti-abortion legislators and activists were increasingly claiming that women didn’t need life-saving abortions because they could have “maternal fetal separations” instead (aka c-sections and forced delivery). And in 2024, I laid out the goal: to divorce abortion from healthcare entirely and eliminate exceptions for women’s lives.
Conservatives Want to End ‘Exceptions’ for Women’s Lives
Jessica ValentiNow, Republicans are ramping up those efforts.
Utah lawmakers, for example, want medical records to distinguish between “elective” and “medically indicated” abortions. Under HB 480, patients who miscarry, face ectopic pregnancies or fatal fetal abnormalities, need life- or health-saving abortions—or are pregnant after rape—could have their medical records formally changed to note they had a good abortion. Not like those other bad women who wanted their pregnancy to end.
A sign that the bill is part of a coordinated national strategy? Utah isn’t alone. A pre-filed Louisiana bill would do much the same thing: HB 288 mandates that when doctors code pregnancy loss as “spontaneous abortion”—which is standard medical language—that they add a parenthetical that says “miscarriage.”
Meanwhile, the South Dakota Senate just passed HB 1257, which would change the definition of abortion to exclude treatment for miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and “any medical procedure performed for the purpose of saving the life or preserving the health of the unborn child.” (aka, c-sections.)
South Dakota lawmakers say they’re just trying to “clarify” the state’s abortion ban because pro-choicers have scared doctors out of providing legal care. That, of course, is the same excuse anti-abortion legislators and activists have used across the country to pass other so-called “clarifications”—bills that actually further restrict women’s rights. (See: Kentucky)
The ACLU of South Dakota points out, for example, that HB 1257 defines an “unborn child” from fertilization, which “could create a legal domino effect that triggers broader restrictions on hormonal contraception, emergency contraception and in vitro fertilization.”
All of which is to say, these bills are not being introduced to help women! The goal is to eliminate all abortion—even to save women’s lives—and to attack any bit of freedom we have.
