Florida has long been a destination state for abortion-seekers in a region defined by sweeping criminal bans. And, despite being under Republican control, Florida had long been a place with one of the highest abortion rates in the nation. Yet this week, a six-week ban signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in April 2023 is set to go into effect. Florida’s law will cut off access for a large number of patients, many of whom will have to travel as far as North Carolina and Virginia, where clinics have already reported long waiting periods and struggles to meet demand.

Six-week bans block a sizable share of abortions—as of 2021, nearly 60 percent of procedures in Florida occured after that point in pregnancy. But the history of six-week bans like Florida’s suggests that this will not be the stopping point for the anti-abortion movement. Six-week bans were designed to be a stopgap in the fight for fetal personhood. And fetal personhood, which establishes that the word “person” in a law or even the Constitution applies to fetuses and embryos, could have implications not only for abortion but also for IVF and perhaps common contraceptives. That may be just what is coming next in Florida.

Janet Folger Porter, a veteran anti-abortion advocate, had the idea for a six-week ban in the late 1980s. She was looking for a way to weaken the right to choose abortion, which the Supreme Court then protected until the point of fetal viability. Porter argued that fetal cardiac activity was just as objective a line to draw as viability—she and her allies often quipped that the heartbeat was the universal sign of life.

Porter also believed that a six-week ban could be a critical step toward establishing that the word “person” under the 14th Amendment applied the moment an egg was fertilized, and........

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