Red state legislators have also introduced a slew of bills targeting abortion pills and minors’ access to the procedure

Legislators in at least four states have introduced bills this year that would change the legal definition of “homicide” to include abortion – proposals that pave the way for states to charge abortion patients with murder.

Pregnancy Justice, a group that tracks these kinds of efforts, says it has recorded more “homicide” bills this year than ever before. Abortion bans have typically penalized providers, rather than patients.

Words ‘at conception’ in order gesture to push by anti-abortion movement to give embryos and fetuses legal rights

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One of Donald Trump’s new executive orders, which claims there are only two genders, quietly incorporates tenets of fetal personhood – the legal doctrine, pushed by the anti-abortion movement, that life begins at conception and that embryos and fetuses therefore deserve full legal rights and protections.

“‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” reads the order, which was issued just hours after Trump took office on Monday. “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”