Punishing pregnant women increasingly serves as a litmus test in political discourse, inviting more than a metaphor about state sanctioned violence targeted at women. In 2016, candidates for the United States presidency threatened to defund Planned Parenthood if elected and a leading candidate promised he would "punish" pregnant women who seek abortions. Other presidential candidates urged that even victims of rape and incest should be forced to carry their pregnancies to term, imposing yet another penalty or strike against sexually violated women and girls. Local legislatures and governors show equal contempt for and desire to penalize women in their states. In Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert took up the call to use a "very strong stick" in policing reproduction by signing into law the Criminal Homicide and Abortion Revisions Act, which applies only to pregnant women. The law seeks to punish pregnant women who "knowingly" commit acts that might result in miscarriages. In 2011, Texas Rep. Doug Miller authored and introduced a bill in his state legislature that would make it a felony to ingest any controlled substance during pregnancy. Wisconsin's legislature passed a law that forces pregnant women to receive vaginal probes as a pre-condition to receiving an abortion. To obtain an abortion without undergoing the vaginal probe is a punishable violation of law. Some women's groups compare vaginal ultrasound laws such as that in Wisconsin to state sanctioned rape with a rod. Other legislative efforts include establishing personhood in embryos and fetuses. Many of the laws seeking to punish pregnant women and regulate their pregnancies introduce criminal sanctions into gestational conduct, broadly criminalizing any behavior that could harm fetal health. All of these laws selectively target pregnant women.
Many genetic counselors recommend that individuals secure desired insurance policies, such as life insurance, prior to undergoing predictive genetic testing. It has been argued, however, that this practice is "tantamount to fraud" and that failure to disclose genetic test results, or conspiring to secure a policy before testing, opens an individual up to legal recourse. This debate traps affected individuals in a Catch-22. If they apply for life insurance and disclose a genetic test result, they may be denied. If they apply without disclosing the information, they may have committed fraud. The consequences of life insurance fraud are significant: If fraud is found on an application, a life insurer can rescind the policy, in some cases even after the individual has passed away. Such a rescission could leave family members or beneficiaries without the benefits of the life insurance policy payment after the individual's death and place them in in economic difficulty. Although it is clear that lying in response to a direct question about genetic testing would be tantamount to fraud, few, if any, life insurance applications currently include broad questions about genetic testing. This paper investigates whether non-disclosure of unasked for genetic information constitutes fraud and explores varying types of insurance questions that could conceivably be interpreted as seeking genetic information. Life insurance applicants generally have no duty to disclose unasked for information, including genetic information, on an application. However, given the complexities of genetic information, individuals may be exposed to fraud and rescission of their life insurance policy despite honest attempts to truthfully and completely answer all application questions.
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