It’s all about turning women into property that can be controlled.

Rule’s case shows how the notion of fetal personhood—an ideology that regards embryos as separate people with rights at odds with the pregnant person’s—can be taken even further, said Dana Sussman, deputy executive director at Pregnancy Justice (which isn’t working on Rule’s case). “What we’re seeing is how this ideology can extend beyond pregnancy itself—the idea that if you can even become pregnant, then you can no longer make decisions about your own body or access medical care,” Sussman told Jezebel.