In the first year after the Supreme Court ended the federal right to an abortion, 210 women faced criminal charges related to pregnancy, abortion, pregnancy loss, or birth. Even before the Dobbs decision, hundreds of women had faced similar charges over the preceding decades. Pregnancy Justice documents over 1,800 criminal cases involving pregnant women from 1973 to 2022, underscoring that criminalization has a long history beyond the past year.
The Supreme Court decision emboldened prosecutors to develop more aggressive legal strategies to charge and imprison pregnant women and new mothers. The rise is attributed to new or newly enforced state-level laws, some framed around “fetal personhood,” and aggressive strategies by prosecutors emboldened by the federal shift.
The War on Women Disguised as Child Protection
For women, the problems did not stop when Roe v. Wade fell. Anti-abortion lawmakers and activists pressed for ever more violent frontiers in their crusade against women. In early September, South Carolina considered a bill more extreme than the state’s already extreme abortion ban. The so-called “Unborn Child Protection Act” could be used to prosecute abortion as equivalent to “the homicide of a person who had been born alive.”
Even before this bill, a similar bill was introduced earlier that would have made an abortion punishable by life in prison or execution. Despite some anti-abortion activists’ previous claims that they would never support prosecuting people for having an abortion, lawmakers in at least 12 states have now introduced such laws.
Many states, like Florida, Texas, and Georgia, have introduced a Heartbeat Bill. The bill bans abortion at six weeks of pregnancy. At this point, the majority of women do not know if they are pregnant. Texas also deputizes private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps someone get an abortion. The bill aims to incentivize private lawsuits against abortion clinics and individuals who aid in abortion.
Utah signed a law last month that would ban renewals of licenses of all abortion clinics once the current license expires. This makes it nearly impossible to have safe abortions at brick-and-mortar facilities for any reason.
Over 400 Women Prosecuted for Pregnancy Outcomes Since Roe’s Reversal
Reproductive rights and justice leaders had warned after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that this would embolden anti-abortion activists to demand such extreme prosecutions.
These warnings are coming true. As new research released earlier this month by the advocacy organization Pregnancy Justice reveals, over the two years following the decision, hundreds of people were prosecuted for their pregnancy outcomes. The organization was able to identify more than 400 cases in which prosecutors charged a person for crimes related to their pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth. Using media reports, public records, and direct information provided to the group, the report offers a snapshot of who has been charged in this new legal environment.
The most common charges, by far, were related to child abuse, neglect, and endangerment. In all, among 412 defendants, 399 were charged with alleged substance use during pregnancy; 29 alleged lack of prenatal care; and nine allegations involved obtaining, attempting, or researching an abortion. The vast majority of all charges were against low-income households, pointing to the systemic bias in the prosecution.
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