Americans Oppose Criminalizing Abortion. Too Many Policymakers Aren’t Listening.

Most Americans reject using the criminal justice system to police abortion care.

Oct 3, 2025
by Lucrecia Mena-Meléndez and Kristen N. Jozkowski

Since the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson and overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, more than half of U.S. states have passed laws that dramatically restrict and criminalize abortion. These laws assign criminal penalties—including fines and prison time—not only to healthcare providers who provide abortions or write prescriptions for abortion pills, but in some cases, also to people who assist abortion seekers. Yet, a growing body of research suggests these punitive measures do not reflect the views of most Americans.

Our team on the Abortion Attitudes Project has been studying public opinion about abortion for approximately eight years, including whether people believe those involved in abortions—pregnant people, healthcare providers and people helping abortion seekers—should be punished if abortion is made illegal. Across various national surveys we conducted before and after Dobbs, we have consistently found that most people do not endorse harsh penalties for pregnant people or healthcare providers.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/10/03/abortion-law-ban-police-criminal-jail-arrest/

03.10.2025

Research

Abortion Attitudes Project

anti-choice misogyny

Kristen N. Jozkowski

Lucrecia Mena-Meléndez

prosecuting providers for abortion

prosecuting women for abortion

punishing women for abortion

Malaysia Punishing Women For Abortion Is Not The Answer

The Galen Centre calls for law reform, after a Melaka court sentenced a 21-year-old woman to jail for self-managed abortion. Abortion has been lawful in Malaysia since 1989 when Section 312 of the Penal Code was amended to allow termination of pregnancy.

By Azrul Mohd Khalib
23 May 2025

The recent nine-month custodial sentence imposed by the Ayer Keroh Magistrate’s Court on a young woman who ended a five-month pregnancy with medication obtained online, highlights the urgent need to modernise laws that continue to criminalise women while failing to address the root causes of unplanned pregnancies.

No woman or girl should face prison for exercising autonomy over her body. Malaysia’s Penal Code still contains provisions dating back from and written in the 19th century. They do not reflect current medical practice, World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations, human-rights standards, or the realities faced by women, especially young women, the poor and the unmarried.

Continued: https://codeblue.galencentre.org/2025/05/punishing-women-for-abortion-is-not-the-answer-azrul-mohd-khalib/

Anti-abortion groups claim they don’t want to punish women. New lawsuits say otherwise.

Lawsuits by multiple red states push to allow employers to penalize women who take time off to seek an abortion or deal with related medical complications.

Feb. 26, 2025
By Mary Ziegler, professor at the UC Davis School of Law

The antiabortion movement is grappling with an internal divide about whether women should be punished for abortion, as a growing number of state legislatures consider personhood bills authorizing the punishment of abortion seekers. But an ongoing struggle to deny accommodations for pregnant workers shows the two sides in this civil war might not be so far apart. Both groups seem to agree employers should be allowed to penalize workers who get abortions.

Well before the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, the nation’s most powerful antiabortion groups denounced the idea of punishing women for abortion. When then-candidate Donald Trump said in 2016 that women deserved “some form of punishment” for abortion, leading antiabortion activists lambasted him. Movement leaders stressed that prosecutors had rarely targeted women in the years before Roe and pledged that nothing would change when abortion was once again a crime. The bans implemented after the Dobbs ruling, such as the trigger laws that went into effect immediately after Roe’s demise, often contained exemptions for pregnant patients.

Continued: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/abortion-pregnant-workers-state-lawsuits-texas-rcna193892

26.02.2025

Commentary

abortion abolitionists

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Mary Ziegler

personhood bills

Pregnant Worker Fairness Act

punishing women for abortion

USA – Anti-Abortion Activists See Their Moon-Shot Goal Within Reach

And we’re already experiencing the consequences.

By Mary Ziegler
Feb 14, 2025

In 2022 the Louisiana Legislature became the first to advance a bill to criminalize abortion seekers. While conservative states often punish women for pregnancy-related conduct, as the group Pregnancy Justice documents, jurisdictions that ban abortion have been careful to stress that they don’t punish women for abortion itself. And when Louisiana came close to doing that, the most powerful national anti-abortion organizations moved to kill the bill, arguing that the movement was united in viewing women as victims, not perpetrators, of abortion.

That might have been it: The movement’s powers that be had spoken, and the case was closed. But this legislative session has already seen a wave of bills authorizing the punishment of abortion patients, proposed by so-called abortion abolitionists, who argue that their bills are the only way for the anti-abortion movement to be logically consistent, as well as morally (and biblically) justified.

Continued; https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/anti-abortion-legislation-fetal-personhood.html

COPS AND REPUBLICANS ARE CRIMINALIZING PREGNANT PEOPLE WITHOUT ROE

by Meg O’Connor
Jun 21, 2023

Abortion opponents have long claimed they only want to criminalize providers, not pregnant people. In a 2023 statement entitled, “Why women are not, and should not be, prosecuted for abortion,” anti-abortion group Americans United for Life said that prosecuting women “for the crime of abortion is unwise and contrary to the goals of the movement.”

This is untrue: even while Roe v. Wade was in place, thousands of people were criminalized for having miscarriages, stillbirths, or abortions. And, in the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, abortion opponents have prosecuted more women for their pregnancy outcomes and introduced laws allowing criminal charges against people who get abortions.

Continued: https://theappeal.org/police-republicans-criminalize-pregnant-people-roe-abortion/

21.06.2023

Commentary

Celeste Burgess

Chelsey Redmon-Zellers

jailing women for abortion

Jessica Burgess

Meg O'Connor

prosecuting women for abortion

punishing women for abortion

Guatemala congress shelves abortion law passed previous week

Guatemala’s Congress has voted to shelve a controversial law stiffening penalties for abortion, prohibiting same-sex marriage and banning discussion of sexual diversity in schools

By The Associated Press
15 March 2022

GUATEMALA CITY -- Guatemala’s Congress voted Tuesday to shelve a controversial law stiffening penalties for abortion, prohibiting same-sex marriage and banning discussion of sexual diversity in schools, acting a week after it passed by a wide margin.

The reversal came after President Alejandro Giammattei threatened a veto because elements of the legislation were considered unconstitutional and in violation of international treaties that Guatemala has signed.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/guatemala-congress-shelves-abortion-law-passed-previous-week-83470946

15.03.2022

Featured

News

Alejandro Giammattei

anti-choice restrictions

Protection of Life and Family

punishing women for abortion

USA – Why the Hyde Amendment and other barriers to reproductive care lead to more domestic violence

Hyde binds the seemingly separable issues of pregnancy, domestic abuse, poverty, and the global pandemic

By KYLIE CHEUNG
PUBLISHED AUGUST 28, 2021

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed a historic budget that didn't include the Hyde Amendment, a budget rider that's severely restricted coverage of abortion care by withholding federal funding since 1976. Of course, the gift of hindsight shows us celebrations of this monumental moment proved slightly premature, when it was quietly undone with a single stroke on Aug. 10.

By a narrow margin, determined as ever to deny us good things, the US Senate adopted an amendment to restore Hyde to the budget, and usher in yet another year of abortion care being all but banned for those who are struggling financially. Today, despite the relative quietness and feelings of helplessness attached to this loss for reproductive justice, we're closer than ever to eliminating Hyde, and there's too much at stake — especially for many victims of domestic abuse — to give up now.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2021/08/28/why-the-hyde-amendment-and-other-barriers-to-reproductive-care-lead-to-more-domestic-violence/

USA – How Republican Policies Force Women to Choose Abortion

How Republican Policies Force Women to Choose Abortion

ZawnVillines
Thursday February 28, 2019

If you believe the social media posts, television screeds, and scare tactics of Republicans, women are murderous by nature. Given half the chance, they’ll undergo invasive surgery to kill a baby for the sheer joy of it. If their unwanted baby is somehow born alive, they’ll happily ask a doctor to snuff out its life.

It’s a nightmarish vision that runs counter to all reason and all evidence. For generations, women have stood at the forefront of every movement to protect human life and dignity. They commit fewer crimes. And though they spend, on average, significantly more time with their children, they’re far less likely to abuse them. When you really start digging into Republican views, it’s hard for them to mask their true feelings: they hate women. They don’t trust them. This depiction of women as infanticidal monsters also ignores hundreds of heartbreaking stories of women who choose to abort children they love, either to spare the child the misery of a few agonizing seconds of life on Earth, or because the child is already dead.

continued: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/2/28/1838316/-How-Republican-Policies-Force-Women-to-Choose-Abortion

Ireland – 8th Amendment demands punishment for women

Fintan O’Toole: 8th Amendment demands punishment for women
Constitutional ban means Ireland too extreme even for mainstream social conservatives

April 30, 2018
Fintan O'Toole

I’m not sure people who want to defend the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution know how extreme their position is. Extreme, that is to say, not by the standards of those of us who always opposed it and would like it to be repealed, but even by the standards of mainstream social conservatism.

The Eighth is, in one crucial respect, on the lunatic fringe of anti-abortion activism. This is because, as has been made clear in recent years, it does not merely outlaw abortion in all but a very small range of circumstances. It does something else, something that most sensible conservatives regard as repugnant – it demands severe punishment for women who have abortions. There is no way around this: while the Eighth is in place, Ireland is committed to treating abortion, not just as a moral wrong, but as a crime more serious than, for example, child rape.

Continued: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-8th-amendment-demands-punishment-for-women-1.3479390

Fintan O’Toole: Ireland’s abortion regime is too cruel even for Trump

Fintan O'Toole: Ireland's abortion regime is too cruel even for Trump
Eighth Amendment law about locking up women and doctors really is step too far

Dec 19, 2017
Fintan O'Toole

Is there no line Donald Trump would not cross? Actually, there is one. It’s not incinerating an entire country, as he threatened to do to North Korea, or incinerating the entire planet by undermining the Paris accord on climate change. It’s not smearing an entire nation, as he did by calling Mexicans rapists. It’s not cosying up to neo-Nazis by claiming that there are some “very fine people” among them. It’s not even republishing to his 40 million Twitter followers anti-Islamic propaganda videos from a British neo-Nazi group. Trump has crossed all of these lines and so many more and never felt that he had gone too far and ought to retreat.

Continued at source: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-ireland-s-abortion-regime-is-too-cruel-even-for-trump-1.3331398