Pregnant Embodiment and Women's Autonomy Rights in Law: An Analysis of the Language and Politics of Winnipeg Child and Family Services v. D.F.G.

This comment examines a Supreme Court of Canada case in which a pregnant woman was coerced by the state into entering a residential addiction treatment program in an effort to protect the health of her fetus. The author examines how the majority and dissenting judgements frame the relevant legal issues and she argues that this reflects a critical difference in how each judge viewed the relationship between women's autonomy rights and fetal rights, as well as the hierarchy therein. The author explores the traditional characterization of a conflict between women's and fetal rights and advances the position that it is nonsensical and legally unjustifiable to recognize the rights of the fetus as independent from those of the mother. [Descriptors: Reproductive Rights - Safe Motherhood, Canada]