This Report outlines current legal statutes that criminalize abortion and the impact overturning Roe v. Wade would have on laws to prosecute and incarcerate those providing, receiving, or assisting with abortions. It details the risk that, without protections provided by Roe v. Wade, many states can and will continue to pass laws that further inflame the national crisis of overcriminalization and mass incarceration. [Released August 2021]

The first comprehensive paper about the criminalization of non-clinical abortion in the U.S. and efforts to eliminate threats, while increasing protections, for people who end pregnancies outside the formal healthcare system. It includes a chart listing problematic laws state by state, maps highlighting the places where people who self-induce abortion are most at risk of an unjustified arrest, excerpts from relevant statutes, and case summaries. The report concludes with recommendations for efforts to liberate non-clinical abortion from the constraints of misunderstanding and the restraints of criminalization. *there are two updates to this report*

Much has changed since “Roe’s Unfinished Promise” was first published in 2017 by the SIA Legal Team (now If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice). President Trump has appointed a second abortion opponent to the U.S. Supreme Court. Lawmakers across the country have proposed increasingly radical abortion restrictions, imposing gestational limits that begin even before a person may discover that they are pregnant, and in some states, outright criminalizing people who have abortions. This is the first of what we anticipate will be a number of updates detailing the exciting progress being made across the country on our shared journey to making reproductive justice a reality for all — even in the face of regressive political, institutional, and systemic opposition to reproductive freedom.

This research brief provides preliminary findings from a multi-year research project to understand who has been targeted by criminalization for self-managing their abortion and how these cases make their way into and through the criminal system. From 2000 to 2020, we identified 61 cases of people who were criminally investigated or arrested for allegedly ending their own pregnancy or helping someone else do so. Cases occurred across 26 states, most of which emerged in Texas, followed by Ohio, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Virginia. Understanding self-managed abortion criminalization over the last twenty years, lends insight into what the criminalization of abortion is likely to look like in a post-Roe America.

A few days after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Biden administration issued guidance seeking to reassure doctors and patients that the federal HIPAA Privacy Rule would allow women to feel confident that they could still seek reproductive healthcare without worrying that the information in their medical records would end up in the hands of police. We write this essay to emphasize how, rather than revealing the strength of healthcare privacy protections in U.S. law, Dobbs and the Biden administration’s highlighting of limited HIPAA protections and seriously inadequate protection of mobile app data draw crucial attention to what has always been a relatively weak set of privacy models.

This article outlines the complex and rapidly shifting legal landscape of trigger laws and new legislation that impact abortion care, dissects questions raised related to cross-border enforcement of abortion restrictions, raises potential interactions of state law with existing federal laws such as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), addresses possible interactions between abortion restrictions and existing state laws that contain liability provisions for aiding and abetting as well as conspiracy, and highlights protective measures that have been enacted both at the state and federal level in an effort to preserve access to reproductive health care.

In November 2011, the citizens of Mississippi voted down Proposition 26, a “personhood” measure that sought to establish separate constitutional rights for fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses. This proposition raised the question of whether such measures could be used as the basis for depriving pregnant women of their liberty through arrests or forced medical interventions. Over the past four decades, descriptions of selected subsets of arrests and forced interventions on pregnant women have been published. Such cases, however, have never been systematically identified and documented, nor has the basis for their deprivations of liberty been comprehensively examined. In this article we report on 413 cases from 1973 to 2005 in which a woman’s pregnancy was a necessary factor leading to attempted and actual deprivations of a woman’s physical liberty. First, we describe key characteristics of the women and the cases, including socioeconomic status and race. Second, we investigate the legal claims made to justify the arrests, detentions, and forced interventions. Third, we explore the role played by health care providers. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings and the likely impact of personhood measures on pregnant women's liberty and on maternal, fetal, and child health. Note: This article was part of a symposium, "The Policy and Politics of Reproductive Health."

All pregnant women, not just those who seek to end a pregnancy, have benefited from Roe v Wade. Today’s system of mass incarceration makes it likely that if Roe is overturned women who have abortions will go to jail. Efforts to establish separate legal “personhood” for fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses, however, are already being used as the basis for the arrests and detentions of and forced interventions on pregnant women, including those who seek to go to term. Examination of these punitive actions makes clear that attacks on Roe threaten all pregnant women not only with the loss of their reproductive rights and physical liberty but also with the loss of their status as full constitutional persons.

This Article examines the paradigm shift that is occurring now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. Returning abortion law to the states has spawned perplexing legal conflicts across state borders and between the state and federal government. We emphasize how these issues intersect with innovations in the delivery of abortion, which can now occur entirely online and transcend state boundaries. The interjurisdictional abortion wars are coming, and this Article is the first to provide the roadmap for the immediate aftermath of Roe’s reversal and what lies ahead.

How Our Movements Can Organize in Solidarity With Each Other