Ladies have lengthy been prone to being arrested for his or her conduct whereas pregnant ― and advocates fear that state legal guidelines handed because the fall of Roe v. Wade will make such punishments extra frequent.
A brand new report from Being pregnant Justice, a authorized advocacy group for pregnant individuals, reveals that a whole lot of pregnant Individuals had been criminalized for his or her being pregnant outcomes, together with miscarriage, even when Roe was in impact. The American School of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines the criminalization of being pregnant as penalizing individuals for actions that may very well be seen as dangerous to their fetuses, even when these behaviors wouldn’t in any other case be thought-about legal.
Practically 1,400 legal arrests occurred between 2006 and June 2022, in line with Being pregnant Justice’s report, for issues like utilizing illicit substances or ingesting alcohol whereas pregnant. Different circumstances embody pregnant girls being criminalized for not sporting a seatbelt, refusing a C-section, not getting prenatal care whereas pregnant and having HIV.
“We should always all be extremely involved about the truth that pregnant persons are getting arrested, prosecuted, separated from their kids and incarcerated for actions that shouldn’t be unlawful,” Lourdes Rivera, the president of Being pregnant Justice, stated throughout a press name on Tuesday.
Most of the tales included in Being pregnant Justice’s report made nationwide headlines. In 2014, for instance, a Tennessee girl who was 9 months pregnant was arrested for driving with out a seatbelt. She had engaged “in conduct which positioned her child in imminent hazard or loss of life or critical bodily damage,” in line with the warrant for her arrest.
“The Dobbs resolution mainly flung open the gates for most of these criminalizations to proceed and improve.”
– Lourdes Rivera, Being pregnant Justice
Geography and earnings stage are the best components in relation to being pregnant criminalization, in line with the report. White pregnant people who find themselves low-income are probably the most criminalized group, whereas Black pregnant people who find themselves low-income are additionally overrepresented within the information.
Round 80% of those arrests occurred in 5 Southern states: Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Oklahoma. Three of these states ― Alabama, South Carolina and Oklahoma ― acknowledge fetuses as individuals of their legal codes, an more and more frequent sort of laws referred to as fetal personhood legal guidelines.
“We are able to tie this improve in criminalization on to the enlargement of the elevated ideology of fetal personhood. The concept that a fetus or a fertilized egg has the identical, if no more rights, than the precise particular person carrying the being pregnant,” Rivera stated. “Throughout the interval that we’re 2006 to June 2022, fetal personhood gained affect and has more and more change into embedded in legal guidelines in judicial selections.”
Fifteen states had some type of legal fetal personhood legal guidelines in impact earlier than Roe fell final summer time. Many, like South Carolina and Alabama, middle on drug use throughout being pregnant and have traditionally been weaponized in opposition to probably the most marginalized, together with poor girls and other people of coloration.
Over 95% of the almost 1,400 circumstances of being pregnant criminalization handled substance use throughout being pregnant, Being pregnant Justice discovered. The three most typical substances present in these circumstances had been methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana; the latter is authorized in lots of states. One-quarter of the circumstances concerned the alleged use of authorized substances, reminiscent of prescription opiates, nicotine and alcohol.
One case included in Being pregnant Justice’s report was a 19-year-old girl from Oklahoma who, in 2020 went to the hospital after experiencing a miscarriage, however she was arrested and charged with manslaughter after she advised hospital workers she had used marijuana and methamphetamine whereas pregnant. The younger girl couldn’t afford her $20,000 bail and remained in jail for a 12 months and a half earlier than she was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 4 years in jail.
And these circumstances don’t simply occur in purple states. A pregnant girl in California gave start to a stillborn child in 2018. She was later charged with homicide, and the prosecutor in her case argued that her meth use precipitated the stillbirth, and he or she spent 4 years in jail earlier than the cost was dropped.
Fetal personhood legal guidelines that targeted on pregnant individuals and drug use, like these in impact earlier than Roe fell, allowed prosecutors to cost pregnant girls with “chemical endangerment of a kid.” For instance, Alabama handed its chemical endangerment regulation in 2006 to guard kids from harmful fumes and chemical compounds present in home-based meth labs.
Not lengthy after, district attorneys began making use of the regulation to drug-using pregnant girls, regardless of the regulation together with nothing about fetuses. Prosecutors stretched the interpretation of the regulation, reasoning {that a} fetus is a baby, and by ingesting medication, the pregnant particular person is bringing chemical hurt to the so-called youngster. In consequence, Alabama’s regulation has been used to criminalize dozens of pregnant individuals within the state after they check optimistic for an unlawful drug or authorized treatment.
Being pregnant Justice’s report additionally contextualizes the historical past of substance use for pregnant individuals within the U.S., pointing to the racist and politically motivated “struggle on medication” marketing campaign of the Nineteen Eighties.
“Being pregnant criminalization first turned widespread within the Nineteen Eighties, amid the sensationalized, racialized, and resoundingly debunked ‘crack child epidemic,’” the report reads. “This armed the anti-abortion motion with an ideal narrative to maneuver their agenda ahead: it performed on racist and sexist tropes about Black girls and their proper to breed… and it created a brand new class of crime sufferer: the harmless fetus, fertilized egg, or embryo. Black girls had been overwhelmingly the targets of being pregnant criminalization within the first a number of many years after Roe.”
Chemical endangerment legal guidelines and different fetal personhood legal guidelines are nonetheless in impact in these 15 states and can probably goal much more pregnant individuals with out the protections of Roe. Final 12 months, Georgia turned the primary state to cross a fetal personhood regulation after the Supreme Court docket’s resolution in Dobbs, which overturned Roe.
“The Dobbs resolution mainly flung open the gates for most of these criminalizations to proceed and improve,” Rivera stated. “Until we do one thing about it, that is sadly going to be the pattern.”
Head right here to learn the Being pregnant Justice report in full.
