Nearly 1,400 people were arrested for actions related to their pregnancies from 2006 through June 2022, according to a report released today by Pregnancy Justice, a nonprofit that defends pregnant people from criminalization. Most of those arrests occurred in five southern states—Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Mississippi. Most cases involved allegations of substance use, even when there was no harm to the fetus or infant.
“Pregnant people are increasingly targeted for criminalization in ways that do not exist for people who are not pregnant, with dire consequences for themselves and their families,” Lourdes A. Rivera, president of Pregnancy Justice, said in a press release. “Halting criminalization requires repealing ‘fetal personhood’ laws and ending the collusion between the criminal and family regulation systems.”
The report reveals a substantial increase in the criminalization of pregnant people over the past decade and a half. In 2013, Pregnancy Justice released a report that found that law enforcement had criminalized 413 pregnant people in the three decades between 1973 and 2005. Pregnancy Justice’s new report found a threefold increase in criminal cases during the last 16 years.
The report links the rise of fetal personhood laws—which give fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses the same legal rights as people—to the heightened criminalization of pregnancy. Nearly 77 percent of cases where pregnant people were criminalized occurred in states that expanded the definition of child abuse to include fetuses, fertilized eggs, and embryos.
The report defines pregnancy criminalization as an instance in which someone is arrested for reasons related to their pregnancy or where terms of a person’s bail, sentencing, or probation are heightened because they became pregnant after being charged with an unrelated crime. Pregnant people were most often accused of child endangerment, substance possession, drug use, feticide, murder, or manslaughter, legally unauthorized abortion, failure to report a birth or death, tampering with remains or abuse of a corpse, fetal assault, or drug delivery.
Nine out of ten cases tracked by Pregnancy Justice involved allegations that a person had used substances, including marijuana, cocaine, or methamphetamine, while pregnant. One-quarter of such cases involved legal substances, such as prescription opiates, nicotine, and alcohol. One-third of the cases involved people accused of using marijuana.
“The playbook that legislators, politicians, and law enforcement officials have been establishing in the context of criminalizing pregnancy and substance use is going to be applied to abortions,” Emma Roth, senior staff attorney at Pregnancy Justice, said in an interview.
Hellbound and Down 