Katha Pollitt

🚨🚨Nearly 1,000 women have been charged with crimes related to pregnancy since the fall of Roe V Wade. Mallori Patrice Strait miscarried in a public bathroom in Texas and was arrested for abuse of a corpse. A judge set her bond at $100,000, and she spent nearly five months in jail, including her 34th birthday, before prosecutors dropped the case for insufficient evidence. While she was locked up, a crisis pregnancy center, or a clinic that is usually not staffed by medical professionals and is typically religiously affiliated, took custody of her fetal remains and buried them. In Ohio, Brittany Watts was arrested after miscarrying at home in her toilet. Police photographed her blood-stained pants, her soiled rags, a drug store receipt for Tylenol, and a discarded hospital bracelet, and entered them as evidence. She faced up to a year in prison before a grand jury refused to indict her. In Georgia, police arrested a 24-year-old who lost a pregnancy at 19 weeks, and the district attorney later dropped it after a medical examiner confirmed the miscarriage was naturally occurring. In the three years since the Dobbs decision revoked the constitutional right to abortion, Pregnancy Justice, an org that works to defend the rights of pregnant people across the country, documented 902 cases where someone was charged with a crime related to their pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth. Its earlier reports found 210 in the first year and 412 by the second, which means the rate of people being charged with pregnancy-related crimes is increasing. The group notes that some of the increase may be because of better tracking, although the trend line is consistent. Cases occurred in at least 23 states: South Carolina had the highest with 381 cases, Oklahoma with 222, and Alabama with 204. These states have some of the strictest abortion bans in the country: SC Republicans have proposed the death penalty for abortion seekers. Of the 902 people charged, 599 were reported as white. In 871 of the cases, prosecutors alleged substance use during pregnancy, and in 77, they treated the absence of prenatal care as evidence of a crime. More than three-quarters of the defendants in Pregnancy Justice’s two-year data were low-income. Only 13 of the 902 cases involved any allegation about an abortion. Between 10 and 20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, which is the medical event lawmakers and law enforcement are treating as suspicious. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says criminalizing pregnancy deters nothing and harms both the pregnant person and the infant. Women in these cases were frequently arrested after seeking medical help or answering a doctor honestly, with hospital staff handing information to police. Every one of these prosecutions is a message to pregnant people in these states that a hospital is a place where you can be arrested. Remember, these rights are still on the ballot this November. ~Now this impact.