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The report documents that in the first year after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, at least 210 pregnant people faced criminal charges for conduct associated with their pregnancy, abortion, pregnancy loss, or birth. The report finds that in the one-year period from June 24, 2022 to June 23, 2023, there was the highest number of pregnancy-related prosecutions documented in a single year.
Legislative efforts to reduce the incidence of babies born low-birth weight is tangled in race and class profiling, which detracts from an evidence-based approach to reduce fetal health harm. On inspection, prescription drug use, domestic violence, and assisted reproductive technology measure significantly in the incidence of fetal health harm and the dramatic rise in neonatology treatments and costs. Goodwin’s article provides an empirical counter narrative to the provocative legislative assumptions about fetal health harm.
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 the United States and specifically Utah, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Policing wombs brings private, intimate spaces into the public theatre, creating spectacles of poor, pregnant women and their children; and this public humiliation functions to visually inscribe these women’s place in the social hierarchy. This article contemplates how we might reconsider these negative externalities relative to the public policy interests that fetal drug laws support. The author argues that the reproductive policing efforts of the past twenty years are consistent with a communitarian approach to reproduction. Goodwin sheds light on the inconsistencies of this approach to behavior policing, which tends to disfavor the less sophisticated, less powerful members of society – namely drug-addicted, poor women of color – and yet ignores the risks posed to fetuses by wealthier would-be parents who use sophisticated, expensive reproductive technologies in their attempts to reproduce.
What exactly does it mean to be human or for that matter a “nonhuman”? This essay unpacks questions regarding the personhood of embryos and fetuses. It takes as its lead the escalating political demand for embryos to attain rights and the status of children. The essay argues that such political demands are not in isolation physically, medically, or legally of women’s health and rights. It makes the case that embryos and fetuses cannot be granted rights without impermissibly implicating pregnant women. Thus, the essay argues against the extension of criminal and tort law to punish pregnant women under fetal protection laws by drawing an analogy to the duty to rescue jurisprudence.
After 100 years of considering abortion a criminal offense, Argentina underwent a major change in the legal framework on December 30, 2020, when Congress approved Law 27.610, Acceso a la Interrupción Voluntaria del Embarazo (Access to Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy). With enactment of this law, the country transitioned from criminalization to legalization of abortion on request up to 14 weeks’ gestational age while keeping the legal indications for abortion (ie, rape or risk to life or health of the pregnant person) as before.
Every year, thousands of women and girls are denied their rights and choices by El Salvador’s total ban on abortion and its criminalization. Women and girls who are carrying an unwanted pregnancy are confronted with two options: commit a crime by terminating the pregnancy, or continue with the unwanted pregnancy. This report details the pervading cultural and institutional barriers that women and girls in El Salvador face in exercising their human rights, particularly those barriers that obstruct the realization of their sexual and reproductive rights.
This essay explores prisons as sites of reproductive injustice by focusing on barriers to abortion and safe childbirth. Published in RADICAL REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique, edited by Loretta J. Ross, Lynn Roberts, Erika Derkas, Whitney Peoples, and Pamela Bridgewater Toure (New York: The Feminist Press, 2017).
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, medication abortion, which typically includes mifepristone (ie, progesterone receptor antagonist) and misoprostol (ie, prostaglandin), gained prominence because it can be provided without physical contact. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other professional organizations quickly endorsed telehealth and no-test abortion care. These protocols omit Rh testing and use patient history, rather than routine ultrasonography, to assess pregnancy duration and screen for ectopic pregnancy risks. To mitigate potential risk of complications, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) require that mifepristone be dispensed in a medical office, clinic, or hospital, prohibiting dispensing from pharmacies. Between a federal judge’s ruling that suspended enforcement of this requirement in July 2020 and a reversal by the Supreme Court in January 2021, clinicians could offer medication abortion via telehealth and dispense from mail-order pharmacies where not prohibited by state law. During this period, a virtual clinic called Choix began providing medication abortions in California. We assessed safety and efficacy outcomes of a telehealth medication abortion model, which could inform the FDA’s decision regarding removal of the REMS.
People have always and will always find ways to try to end their pregnancies when necessary. Many do so safely without the involvement or direct supervision of healthcare professionals by self-managing their abortions. In 2022, the well-established safety and efficacy of abortion medications prompted WHO to fully endorse self-managed medication abortion as part of a comprehensive range of safe, effective options for abortion care. But despite robust evidence supporting the safety and effectiveness of the self-use of medications for abortion, abortion laws and policies around the world remain at odds with clinical evidence and with the realities of self-managed medication abortion in the present day. The present article considers legal issues related to self-managed abortion and addresses the role of obstetricians, gynecologists, and other healthcare professionals in promoting clinical and legal safety in abortion care through support of self-managed abortion.
To summarize clinical outcomes and adverse effects of medical abortion regimens consisting of mifepristone followed by buccal misoprostol in pregnancies through 70 days of gestation. We used PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, and reference lists from published reports to identify relevant studies published between November 2005 and January 2015 using the search terms "mifepristone and medical abortion" and "buccal and misoprostol." Studies were included if they presented clinical outcomes of medical abortion using mifepristone and buccal misoprostol through 70 days of gestation. Studies with duplicate data were excluded.
This Litigation Manual was developed by NACDL’s Criminalization of Reproductive Health Task Force to serve as a comprehensive resource to effectively litigate abortion cases. As the nation’s preeminent criminal defense bar, we are deeply committed to ensuring that the defense community is fully equipped to represent all accused persons at the highest level. This resource is restricted to defense attorneys. It is not to be used by those employed by prosecution or law enforcement organizations or otherwise involved in the prosecution of criminal cases or law enforcement. [Released Nov. 2023]
This shadow report focuses on the punishment and criminalization of individuals for abortion, stillbirths, miscarriages, and adverse pregnancy outcomes. In the U.S., human rights violations occur when states pass laws that explicitly criminalize performing abortions and when state officials misuse other laws to surveil, investigate, arrest, detain, and prosecute pregnant individuals based on the perceived impact of their actions on their pregnancy.
Pregnant people have been criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes even after Roe v Wade established some rights to reproductive autonomy. Fetal personhood theory, changing societal conceptions of motherhood, and existing racial and class-based biases have fueled an increasing and complex patchwork of punitive policies and interpretations. This study analyzed 35 well-documented cases of modern pregnancy criminalization to categorize this complicated phenomenon, seeking to clarify potential policy areas that may help address this issue more broadly. This study resulted in four categories of actions that have led to arrests and forced interventions into pregnant people’s lives: refusing medical care, substance use, personal injury, and self-managed abortion. In the shadow of the Dobbs decision, this categorization allows for clarification of which areas of policy may require targeted advocacy for the development of true reproductive justice. In addition, this study investigated several common factors in pregnancy criminalization- such as racial inequality, poverty rates, drug criminalization, etc- to determine risk factors and high-risk states.
The Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the growing onslaught of state laws that criminalize abortion are part of a long history of maintaining White supremacy through reproductive control of Black and socially marginalized lives. As public health continues to recognize structural racism as a public health crisis and advances its measurement, it is imperative to explicate the connection between abortion criminalization and White supremacy. In this essay, we highlight how antiabortion policies uphold White supremacy and offer concrete strategies for addressing abortion criminalization in structural racism measures and public health research and practice.