Abortion investigations causing women ‘life-changing harm’, says UK expert

Women losing ‘everything’ after being accused of illegal abortion in England and Wales, even if not charged, says Dr Jonathan Lord

Emine Sinmaz, Guardian
Sat 27 Jan 2024

Women in England and Wales accused of having illegal abortions have been held in custody after pregnancy loss, had their children taken into care and been saddled with debt, an expert has said.

Dr Jonathan Lord, a co-chair of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) abortion taskforce, said he was aware of up to 30 “deeply traumatic” cases where women had been investigated by the police, with some suffering “life-changing harm”. He said: “We’ve had patients lose everything – lose their home, lose their children, lose their relationship with their partner – purely as a consequence of the investigation.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/27/abortion-investigations-causing-women-life-changing-harm-says-uk-expert

Brittany Watts, Ohio woman charged with felony after miscarriage at home, describes shock of her arrest

by Jericka Duncan, Rachel Bailey, Cassandra Gauthier and Hilary Cook
January 26, 2024
Video interview: 10 minutes

When Brittany Watts woke up at her Warren, Ohio, home on Sept. 22, 2023, she knew she was miscarrying.

Her 22-week-old fetus had been declared nonviable by doctors several days prior. Bleeding and in pain, she spent a total of 19 hours in the hospital over a span of two days, begging to be induced.
But an ethics group at Mercy Health - St. Joseph Warren Hospital had concerns about Ohio's abortion laws and how they applied to Watts' case, ultimately resulting in hours of delayed care.

Continued: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brittany-watts-the-ohio-woman-charged-with-a-felony-after-a-miscarriage-talks-shock-of-her-arrest/

Prosecuted for a miscarriage: Ohio demonstrates the ghoulishness of post-Roe America

Post-Roe politics are turning every pregnancy into a potential crime scene

Dec. 21, 2023
By Andrea Grimes

Give birth, die trying, or go to jail.

To the anti-abortion politicians and lobbyists who got their wish when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, these have always been the only acceptable pregnancy outcomes. Ideally, they’d like a country full of meek, compliant (and mostly white) women whose sole mission in life is to have children. But since pregnancy is dangerous, it’s unavoidable that a number of those women will die in the process — especially in the United States, where our maternal mortality rates (particularly for Black and brown people) are already exceptionally high, and rising. That’s too bad, of course, but for anti-abortion forces it’s better than the alternative: Women who think we have the right to make our own decisions about when, where and whether to carry a pregnancy to term.

Continued: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ohio-woman-miscarriage-case-brittany-watts-rcna130511

USA – A woman who had a miscarriage is now charged with abusing a corpse as stricter abortion laws play out nationwide

By Maria Sole Campinoti, Holly Yan and Zenebou Sylla, CNN
Tue December 19, 2023

An Ohio woman who had sought treatment at a hospital before suffering a miscarriage and passing her nonviable fetus in her bathroom now faces a criminal charge, her attorney told CNN.
Brittany Watts, 33, of Warren, has been charged with felony abuse of a corpse, Trumbull County court records show.

“Ms. Watts suffered a tragic and dangerous miscarriage that jeopardized her own life. Rather than focusing on healing physically and emotionally, she was arrested and charged with a felony,” her attorney, Traci Timko, told CNN in an email.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/19/us/brittany-watts-miscarriage-criminal-charge/index.html

19.12.2023

Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights

prosecuting women for miscarriage

USA – Could you go to prison for having a miscarriage?

Dec 8, 2023
Aisha Sultan, Columnist and features writer

Imagine dealing with the trauma of losing a pregnancy and facing a police investigation and criminal charges in the midst of your grief and devastation.

It seems like a dystopian nightmare. Why would a woman, already physically and emotionally wrecked, be put through this kind of cruelty by the state? It’s been happening more often than most people realize.

Continued: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/column/aisha-sultan/sultan-could-you-go-to-prison-for-having-a-miscarriage/article_a5af41d0-9504-11ee-b4e8-33a37eee5d89.html

With thanks to the newsletter from International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion…

Care not criminalisation: reform of British abortion law is long overdue

BMJ, J Med Ethics, August 2023, Vol 49 No 8
Sally Sheldon, Jonathan Lord

Megan is a young teenage patient who suffered a stillbirth at 28 weeks, leading to a year long police investigation dropped only after postmortem tests found that her pregnancy was lost due to natural causes. The stress of the investigation and her isolation from friends and support network following the seizure of her mobile and laptop compounded the trauma of the stillbirth, leaving her requiring emergency psychiatric care.

Aisha is a vulnerable patient who suffered a premature delivery, having experienced similar problems in earlier pregnancies. Things happened so quickly that Aisha delivered on her own at home, only then seeking medical care. She told hospital staff that earlier in her pregnancy she had considered an abortion. As a result, she found herself interviewed under police caution and was required to surrender her phone and tablet, limiting access to friend and family support just when most needed. Aisha was denied unsupervised access to

her baby in the intensive care unit, needing to hand over expressed breast milk to a receptionist.

Continued: https://jme.bmj.com/content/medethics/49/8/523.full.pdf

Argentina – She had a miscarriage. Now she’s facing life in prison

By Natalie Alcoba
December 12, 2022

One morning in December 2020, La China* was overcome with abdominal cramps. She has polycystic ovary syndrome and has often suffered severe pain and irregular, heavy periods. The condition was a reason why she hadn’t realised she was pregnant until after eight months with her first child, and until after six months with the second.

That morning, in intense pain, the 43-year-old Venezuelan, who lives in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, took some painkillers and went to bed. But she began bleeding profusely. What happened next is disputed.

Continued: https://bhekisisa.org/features/2022-12-12-she-had-a-miscarriage-now-shes-facing-life-in-prison/

Why the Right to an Abortion Matters for Every Person

In a deeply personal essay, the actor Sophia Bush and her husband, Grant Hughes, share the impact abortion has had on their life.

By Sophia Bush and Grant Hughes
July 13, 2022

The emotions I feel—rage, fear, pain, frustration, sadness, empathy—are all-consuming as I, along with millions of you, grapple with the enormity of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which for the last 50 years has protected our fundamental right to abortion care, and to self-determination. It’s infuriating to watch lawmakers tune out the cries of medical professionals and to see women treated—in the halls of a government that purports to be founded on “liberty and justice for all”—as less-than, as though their needs and their lives don’t matter. And it is deeply painful to see people consigned—legislated—to suffering. Our right to reproductive choice is fundamental to our democracy, so much so that one of the societal changes that signifies a backsliding democracy, one of the surefire things that happens anywhere when equality is being chipped away, is the rollback of the rights of women, and particularly those relating to bodily autonomy. Without reproductive choice, we have no autonomy. And so years ago I joined the fight for womxn to control their own bodies.

https://www.glamour.com/story/why-the-right-to-an-abortion-matters-for-every-person

13.07.2022

National Advocates for Pregnant Women

prosecuting women for miscarriage

El Salvador woman’s 50-year jail sentence outrages abortion rights group

July 4, 2022
Reuters

SAN SALVADOR - A woman in El Salvador has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for aggravated homicide in a controversial case in which authorities argued she had killed her baby after giving birth, while her defenders said she had suffered a miscarriage.

Salvadoran authorities said the woman carried her baby to near-full term and gave birth in June 2020. After having the baby, she stabbed it in the neck six times, they said.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/el-salvador-womans-50-year-jail-sentence-outrages-abortion-rights-group-2022-07-04/

04.07.2022

Featured

News

Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion

Morena Herrera

prosecuting women for miscarriage

If Roe falls, more women will be prosecuted for miscarriages

By Radley Balko
May 26, 2022

About 10 years ago, a longtime state medical examiner in Texas and Mississippi told me something that has stuck with me ever since. He said there’s a type of prosecutor who believes that innocent babies just don’t die on their own. “They don’t believe in accidents,” he said, “especially when the parents are poor. Someone must be at fault. So someone has to pay.”

It isn’t hard to find cases to back up his theory. I’ve previously written about Hattie Douglas, a Mississippi woman who was arrested and jailed for a year for killing her infant son with alcohol poisoning until a lab concluded a medical examiner had botched the test results.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/26/if-roe-falls-more-women-will-be-prosecuted-miscarriages/

26.05.2022