210 Women Faced Criminal Charges Related to Their Pregnancies or Pregnancy Loss During First Year After Dobbs
It’s not theoretical anymore. It’s real.
In the first year after Roe v Wade was overturned (June 2022-June 2023), over 200 women have faced criminal charges for conduct associated with their pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth. The majority of these charges are in just six states: Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. All run by Republicans and operating under abortion bans.
Trump said in an interview that “there has to be some sort of punishment” for the woman. And it’s already happening.
Researchers have found that pregnancies and pregnancy loss are more highly scrutinized in these states. And it’s more about the ramifications of giving full legal personhood rights to a fetus than it is about actual abortions. Read below:
“Almost none of the prosecutions documented by researchers were brought under state abortion laws. Instead, researchers found that law enforcement most often charged pregnant women with crimes such as child neglect or endangerment, interpreting the definition of “child” to include a fetus. In doing so, authorities relied on a legal concept called fetal personhood — the idea that a fetus, embryo or fertilized egg has the same legal rights as a person who has been born.
“If we focus only on abortion laws, we miss a crucial part of the picture in the fact that pregnant individuals are being criminalized for allegedly endangering their own pregnancies, for pregnancy loss and, in some cases, for conduct related to abortion. What’s driving pregnancy criminalization is the expansion of fetal personhood.’
“Charges of child abuse or endangerment carry stiffer penalties — higher fines and lengthier prison sentences — than the low-level drug charges the women likely would have faced had they not been pregnant.
“‘Pregnancy-related prosecutions don’t generally charge crimes that, on the face of the criminal statute, have anything whatsoever to do with pregnancy,’ said Wendy Bach, a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law and the report’s principal investigator. ‘Instead, using the idea of fetal personhood, or more specifically the idea that the fetus can be the victim of a crime perpetrated by the pregnant person, they use that theory to charge general crimes.'”
