More women are charged with pregnancy-related crimes since the end of Roe vs. Wade

In the year after the US Supreme Court ends abortion rights Nationwide, women are more likely to be charged with pregnancy-related crimes by authorities, even though they are almost never charged with violating abortion bans, a new study finds.

At least 210 women across the country have been charged with crimes related to their pregnancies since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 2022 in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, according to a report published by Pregnancy Justice, a women’s rights advocacy organization.

This is the highest number the group has identified in a 12-month period in research projects dating back to 1973.

Wendy Bach, a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law and one of the project’s lead researchers, said one case involved a woman who gave birth at home to a stillborn baby six or seven months into her pregnancy.

Bach said that when the woman went to make arrangements for the funeral, the funeral home alerted authorities and the woman was charged with murder.

Due to confidentiality provisions in the study, Bach declined to disclose further details. But this was one of 22 cases in the study in which a fetus or infant died.

“It’s an environment where pregnancy loss is potentially criminally suspect,” Lourdes Rivera, president of Pregnancy Justice, said in an interview.

The researchers point out that the case count from June 24, 2022, to June 23, 2023, is lower than the actual number, as are previous versions. As a result, they cannot confirm that there were not as many cases between 1973 and 2022 as there were after the Dobbs ruling.

Over the previous period, they found more than 1,800 cases, with a peak of 160 in 2015 and 2017.

Most of the cases since Roe’s reversal involve charges of child abuse, neglect or endangerment in which the fetus was named as the victim. Most included allegations of substance use during pregnancy, including 133 in which it was the only allegation.

According to the group, most charges do not require proof that the baby or fetus suffered actual harm.

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