In 2013, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling permitting the prosecution of pregnant drug users under the state’s so-called “chemical endangerment of a child” statute. Under the court’s interpretation of the 2006 law, any woman who exposed her unborn child to illegal drugs in utero could be charged with a felony and sentenced to up to 20 years to life in prison (if the child was stillborn or died at birth). The ruling was unusual for a number of reasons. The chemical endangerment statute had been enacted to protect children from dangerous meth labs, not to punish pregnant addicts. The Alabama court’s ruling was also far more sweeping than similar decisions by other state high courts. Finally, the ruling consisted of two parts, both written by Justice Tom Parker. The main opinion dealt with the facts of the case; the second “special concurrence” was a lengthy treatise about fetal rights and abortion. The ruling was not an aberration. In at least two other recent cases that had nothing to do with abortion, Parker had issued rulings aimed at creating a new jurisprudence of personhood — the idea that a fetus is fully human from the moment of conception and that Roe v. Wade is thus unconstitutional. Carefully, deliberately, and with very little fanfare, he was using the imprimatur of his office to establish a body of law that might eventually be used to overturn Roe. Parker, it turned out, had been a longtime combatant in Alabama’s fights to restore religion to the courts and the schools, with strong ties to far-right religious organizations and the anti-abortion movement. When he joined the court in 2005, he had staffed it with leading figures in the Christian Reconstructionist movement, which believes that God is the foundation of all law and that judges are morally bound to follow biblical teachings. In speeches and op-eds, Parker had made plain his intentions. But until this ProPublica piece, very few people outside the burgeoning personhood movement were paying any attention.
