Justice in Jeopardy: Pregnancy-Related Crimes Soar After Roe's Downfall

In a chilling trend that has left many authorities concerned, the number of pregnancy-related crimes has skyrocketed in the United States since the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling was overturned. According to a recent study, a staggering 210 cases of pregnancy-related crimes were reported in the first year after the Dobbs decision, with Alabama and Oklahoma being the hotspots for such cases. The study, conducted by Pregnancy Justice, found that most of these cases involved allegations of substance use during pregnancy, with over half of the defendants being low-income individuals. What's more alarming is that in most cases, proof of fetal harm was not required to charge these individuals with crimes.Professor Wendy Bach, a lead researcher on the project, shared a particularly disturbing case where a woman was charged with homicide after delivering a stillborn baby at home. When the woman went to make funeral arrangements, the funeral home alerted authorities, and she was subsequently charged with homicide. The trend is not limited to these two states. A legal historian, Mary Ruth Ziegler, pointed out that prosecutions of pregnant women for conduct during pregnancy didn't start with the anti-abortion movement but accelerated with it. This new environment has led to the wrongful criminalization of legal behaviors from pregnant individuals. The rise in pregnancy-related crimes can be attributed to the anti-abortion movement's push for fetal personhood, which grants legal rights to a fertilized egg. This ideology has led law enforcement to misapply existing criminal laws and apply them to pregnant individuals in ways that are unjust and harmful.