More Women Face Pregnancy-Related Charges After Roe’s Fall, Report Finds
Want to protect abortion access nationwide? Tell your representatives to take action.
What’s the story?
- A report released by Pregnancy Justice, a women's health advocacy group, found that women have been increasingly charged with pregnancy-related crimes since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
- The group reported that at least 210 people in the U.S. were prosecuted for conduct relating to their pregnancies—the highest number of cases recorded in a single year. Researchers warn that this is probably an underestimate of 2022 to 2023 charges.
- Pregnancy Justice’s report is the first comprehensive account of pregnancy-related crimes since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
The details of the report
- The majority of the cases did not involve abortion and rarely accused women of violating an abortion ban. Nevertheless, women’s health experts and advocates are concerned that this trend illustrates the growing attempt to control, regulate, and criminalize women’s bodies and pregnancies.
- Five cases mentioned allegations of an abortion, an attempted abortion, or “researching or exploring the possibility of abortion.” One of the cases involved a woman delivering a stillborn baby in her home. When the woman attempted to make funeral arrangements, the authorities were alerted, and she was charged with homicide. She is not alone in this, as many other women have reported a similar experience—over three-quarters of the cases in the report involved fetal or infant loss. President of Pregnancy Justice, Lourdes Rivera, said:
“It’s an environment where pregnancy loss is potentially criminally suspect.”
- More than 95% of the prosecutions involved allegations of substance use during pregnancy, with charges of child abuse, neglect, or endangerment. In these cases, the fetus or embryo is legally treated as a person, potentially competing with the rights of the person carrying them. Over 100 cases included in the report were in Alabama, where the state's Supreme Court ruled that embryos are “extrauterine children.”
What they’re saying
- Advocates are noting how prosecutors, in these cases, must prove that the defendant posed some risk to the pregnancy, which could lead to criminalization of behavior that is not actually dangerous. Zenovia Earle, media and communications director for Pregancy Justice, said:
“It’s ultimately, a lot of the time, based on someone’s perception of risky behavior, however they might define it, and it’s often based on stereotypes or outdated notions.”
- In more than half of the reported cases, information used against the defendant was obtained in a medical setting, shining a light on social workers or health care providers that tip off police to a suspected interest in, or self-managed, abortion. Wendy Bach, a University of Tennessee professor and the report’s principal investigator, said:
“[N]ow we have people all over the country hiding real healthcare needs and not reaching out for help. That’s the effect of this. I would like a society in which people who need care, seek care. But if this is what’s going to happen, then it is totally rational to not seek care.”
Want to protect abortion access nationwide? Tell your representatives to take action.
-Jamie Epstein
(Photo credit: Flickr/Matt Hrkac)
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Republicans have different meanings about freedom of speech compared to you, it's about being held accountable for lies and being fact checked!🎤
I don't understand why people you study the law are willing to ignore the rule of law?
Permanent contraception (tubal ligation, vasectomy) doubles after Dobbs, 14 states ban abortion, and state prosecutions of woman over any behavior resulting in loss of a fetus.
" a paper published on April 12th in jamaHealth Forum, a medical journal, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Boston University analysed data on permanent contraceptive procedures among 18- to 30-year-olds (see chart). They looked at 22m instances of patients attending at least one appointment, for either evaluation or treatment, in each month between January 2019 and September 2023. These were mostly at academic medical centres, so government-funded public clinics providing free family-planning services to poor people may not have been adequately represented."
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/04/19/after-dobbs-americans-are-turning-to-permanent-contraception#
From the man who loaded the Supreme Court with anti-abortion judges (with the Heritage Foundation's list), so that Roe would be overturned:
“WOMEN ARE POORER THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, ARE LESS HEALTHY THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO… AND ARE LESS OPTIMISTIC AND CONFIDENT IN THE FUTURE THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO!” Trump wrote Friday.
He argued that if he’s elected, those feelings will be fixed, and “YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION, BECAUSE IT IS NOW WHERE IT ALWAYS HAD TO BE, WITH THE STATES.”
Me: Do you think we're stupid? As long as you "leave abortion up to the states", women will suffer & die. Children will be neglected, as those same states who care so much about the unborn, are also the very same states who don't fund education, maternal care, nor supports for nutrition nor housing. Wake up you misogynistic freaks. 70% of women eligible to vote are registered.
Celie (The Color Purple": Until you do right by me, everything you think about is going to crumble"
https://www.statista.com/statistics/999930/share-people-registered-vote-gender/
Most of the cases are in states that have state laws (AL, MS, OH, OK, SC, TX) that legally recognize fetal personhood, have a near total abortion bans, then use child neglect laws which have a lower bar of evidence and proof, based on information from healthcare providers turned snitches most likely out of fear of being prosecuted too. 5 states (AK, IL, MO, NE, WV) are in process of similar legislation.
Women are actually being criminalized for endangering their pregnancies opening the door to prosecutions for miscarriages based on lifestyle.
No cases have been brought against companies who release toxins into the environment that harm children.
" the majority of cases occurred in “states that have enshrined fetal personhood in their civil and criminal laws,” such as Alabama (104 cases), Oklahoma (68 cases) and South Carolina (10 cases)—all states that have near-total abortion bans and some of the worst maternal and infant health outcomes.... ... five of the six states with the highest number of criminal prosecutions of pregnant women have the “fetal personhood” fiction enshrined in their civil and criminal laws through judicial decisions, statutes or constitutional amendments."
" Most of the charges involved allegations of child abuse, neglect or endangerment (198 cases), but they also included alleged homicide where there is a pregnancy loss (9), drug-related crimes (8) and abuse of a corpse (1). "
"In 203 cases, criminal charges were based on alleged pregnancy and the use of a controlled substance. In 31 cases, the only controlled substance identified was THC (marijuana), and in five of those cases the women were taking legally prescribed medical marijuana. None of the drugs in these cases were abortifacients."
"Where a pregnancy loss occurs and there is a positive drug test, prosecutors in some cases have brought homicide-related charges based not on any evidence of causation but rather on the coincidence of a pregnancy loss, which occurs in 15-25 percent of all pregnancies, and evidence of any drug use."
"In 191 cases (over 90 percent), the charges did not require any “proof” of harm to the fetus or newborn, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, no harm is alleged. Relying on child endangerment laws that require only something identified as a potential risk of harm, or laws like Alabama’s that have been used to make non-harmful fetal exposures per se crimes, women are arrested, prosecuted and convicted based on nothing more than pregnancy and a positive (typically unconfirmed) drug test."
" Meanwhile, prosecutors are not bringing criminal cases against companies and policymakers who release toxic agents into the environment that have clear causal connections to fetal harm. They have not, for example, targeted the government officials in Flint, Mich., who knowingly switched the city’s drinking water supply to a source contaminated with lead, tripling the incidence of dangerously-high blood levels of lead in the city’s children"
"A significant number of the cases were based on prosecutors’ after-the-fact opinions on when and how pregnant women should have interacted with healthcare providers."
"In 15 cases, the charging documents alleged women failed to obtain adequate prenatal care, and two alleged noncompliance with a medical provider’s recommended treatment.
Ten cases referred to failure to seek help during or after birth. Three condemned mothers for breastfeeding their infants."
"Women’s reluctance to seek medical care is understandable, given the frequency with which medical providers share information about their pregnant patients with child welfare authorities and police. In over one half of the cases (121 out of 210 cases or 57 percent), police relied on information obtained or disclosed in a medical setting. In 114 cases (54 percent), the “child welfare” system was involved."
"The Pregnancy Justice report revealed that the vast majority of people targeted had low-incomes (78 percent). Meanwhile, prosecutions now mirror the overall population by race: 143 were white (68 percent), 30 were Black (14 percent), 13 were Native American (6 percent), nine were Latinas (4 percent), and in 15 cases there was no information regarding race or ethnicity."
"Growing efforts to treat fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses as separate constitutional persons—encouraged by the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs and planned for by Project 2025—have provided the basis for the marked increase and largest number of arrests of pregnant women in any single year."
"The fetal stage of pregnancy begins during the 11th week of pregnancy (nine weeks after fertilization), but the idea of “fetal” personhood is used to justify prosecutions of women in earlier stages of pregnancy when no fetus is present. Prosecutors use the legal fiction of “fetal personhood” to justify criminalization of pregnant women at every stage of pregnancy."
"pregnant individuals are being criminalized for allegedly endangering their own pregnancies, for pregnancy loss and, in some cases, for conduct related to abortion"
https://missouriindependent.com/2024/10/01/200-women-faced-criminal-charges-over-pregnancy-in-year-after-dobbs-report-finds/
https://msmagazine.com/2024/10/01/pregnant-women-jail-prison-dobbs-roe-abortion/
tRump, his minions, and Project 2025 have set women & their rights back by more than 50 years. Women who have been forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, have not been treated by doctors for emergency care for fear of imprisonment, cannot access IVF to build their families, and now women who have DIED because they were unable to get the healthcare that should be their right...all of these consequences lie solely on tRump's shoulders. End this by codifying Roe! Make it the law of the land and end this dystopian tragedy.
For all of you hell bent on no abortion, Roe allows you to make that decision, too...just in case you forgot.
Regardless of your party affiliation get out and show Republicans that banning books, degrading immigrants, ruining the lives of gay and trans children and preventing women from getting medical care they need to survive a non viable pregnancy or miscarriage just for a vote is not ok. The my way or no way philosophy of Republicans being crammed down Americans' throats can only be stopped at the ballot box. #voteblue #democracyoverparty #stopthebullies #youvotematters
The GOP is not pro-life!
They have no plan to support pregnant women, young mothers, or children born to women who are struggling.
They just want to control women's bodies.
If the GOP actually cared about women and children, they would be passing legislation to help them, instead of fighting so hard to restrict women's choices.
The last time the far-right had this much power we had prohibition. How did that go?