Abstract
In the 1970s, savvy anti-abortion lawyers began employing “fetal guardians” as a procedural mechanism to restrict abortion access. In Juliana v. United States, arguably the most important climate lawsuit from the past ten years, a “guardian for future generations” acted as a plaintiff. These forms of legal guardianship resemble each other because they both rely on property law precedent, invoke creative interpretations of guardianship, and represent future interests. This connection also presents a predicament for climate litigators and anti-abortion litigators, who don’t typically share the same agenda. To date, this intersection between fetal and future generation guardianship has not received any scholarly attention. I use fetal guardianship case law and law and politics scholarship (1) to investigate what climate litigators can learn from the way anti-abortion actors developed a novel theory of guardianship and (2) to analyze the implications of the overlap between fetal guardianship and future generation guardianship. At a time when federal judges are referring to fetuses as “unborn children” and climate change is reaching multiple “tipping points,” it’s crucial to investigate the link between legal guardianship in climate and abortion litigation.
Recommended Citation
Celia Parry, Strange Bedfellows: Guardians for Fetuses and Future Generations, 42 Pace Env't L. Rev. 477 (2025).
Included in
Energy and Utilities Law Commons, Environmental Law Commons, Natural Resources Law Commons