The Uses of Personhood: Negotiating Social Welfare and Definitions of Dependence

The narrative of 1970s fetal politics typically focuses on Roe v. Wade, and only brings socioeconomic class into the narrative around the 1976 Hyde Amendment. In fact, economic and welfare concerns surround fetal politics years earlier. I focus on the 1975 Supreme Court case Alcala v. Burns. In this case, fetal personhood was debated on socio-economic terms, as welfare rights advocates sought the expansion of Aid the Families with Dependent Children to pregnant women without other dependents, while most state welfare agencies attempted to halt this expansion. With this case, the Supreme Court ruled that states are not required to count fetuses as “children” entitled to welfare benefits. Pregnant women would not be defined as mothers and fetuses would not be defined as dependents. eeping consistent with the Roe v. Wade ruling, the court decided that there would be no benefits to low-income women to help them prepare for their children, just as the Hyde Amendment ruled there was no mandate of funding abortion to help them terminate pregnancies. In this case, critically, narratives of personhood are deeply complicated by the economic status of the pregnant woman. While Roe v. Wade solidified women’s rights by quashing personhood arguments, the loss of such a narrative was ultimately damaging to low-income women opting to carry pregnancies to term, who found narratives of fetal personhood strategically useful for procuring assistance.