fetus

The Amendment 4 campaign to pass the initiative ran ads that shared the story of a Florida woman who learned at 24 weeks pregnant that her fetus had no kidneys but had to carry it for three additional months knowing it would not survive.

The fetus stood no chance of survival, but the hospital refused to terminate the pregnancy; when she miscarried the next day in the bathroom of a hair salon, she lost half the blood in her body and had to be mechanically ventilated at the hospital.

At that second ER visit, her fetus still had a heartbeat.

As the National Council of Jewish Women has pointed out, Jewish law does not state that life begins at conception, or that a fetus is alive.

However, in 2022, conservative lawmakers in the state put a so-called “Born Alive” ballot measure that would have declared an embryo or fetus as a legal person in front of voters, which they rejected.