US prosecutors keep charging women with ‘pregnancy-related crimes’

In the two years after Roe v Wade was overturned, hundreds were charged amid growing acceptance of ‘fetal personhood’

Arwa Mahdawi
Sat 4 Oct 2025

The pregnancy police are racking up arrests

Every 74 seconds, someone in the US is sexually assaulted. And every nine minutes that ‘someone’ is a child, according to statistics collated by the anti-sexual violence non-profit Rainn.

Instead of sending alleged sex offenders to court, the Trump administration seems more interested in putting them in positions of power. Less than 4% of reported rapes, sexual assaults and child sexual abuse allegations in certain cities across the country ever lead to a sex crime conviction, an NBC News investigation from earlier this year found. To reiterate: that’s reported assaults. By some counts, nearly 80% of rapes and sexual assaults go unreported.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/04/week-in-patriarchy-pregnancy-crimes

04.10.2025

Commentary

Amnesty International

prosecuting women for miscarriage

prosecuting women for pregnancy

Hundreds of US women charged with pregnancy-related crimes since fall of Roe

Study finds prosecutors targeting low-income women mainly in US south – and figure likely to be an undercount

Carter Sherman
Tue 30 Sep 2025

In the first two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, prosecutors in 16 states charged more than 400 people with pregnancy-related crimes, new research released on Tuesday found.

Of the 412 cases tracked by Pregnancy Justice, the vast majority took place in the US south, targeted low-income women and involved allegations that women broke laws against child abuse, endangerment or neglect, according to the research, which was compiled by the reproductive justice group. About 300 prosecutions took place in Alabama and Oklahoma. In 16 cases, law enforcement charged women with homicide.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/30/pregnancy-us-women-crimes-study

30.09.2025

prosecuting women for abortion

prosecuting women for miscarriage

prosecuting women for pregnancy

These States Are Using Fetal Personhood to Put Women Behind Bars

Hundreds of women who used drugs while pregnant have faced criminal charges — even when they deliver healthy babies.

By CARY ASPINWALL, The Marshall Project
July 25, 2023

When Quitney Armstead learned she was pregnant while locked up in a rural Alabama jail, she made a promise — to God and herself — to stay clean.

She had struggled with addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder for nearly a decade, since serving in the Iraq War. But when she found out she was pregnant with her third child, in October 2018, she resolved: “I want to be a mama to my kids again.”

Continued: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/07/25/pregnant-women-prosecutions-alabama-oklahoma