According to a recent study published by Pregnancy Justice, an organization dedicated to advancing and defending “the rights of pregnant people, no matter if they give birth, experience a pregnancy loss, or have an abortion,” 902 women faced criminal charges related to their conduct during pregnancy in the three years following the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
According to the study, the vast majority of these cases were related to child abuse, neglect or endangerment, mostly in the form of substance use during pregnancy, but before you jump to “Well, I guess I can see that!” in the majority of these cases (854 of 955 charges) there was also no actual requirement to prove that whatever the person supposedly did actually caused any harm to the fetus or infant.
In 77 of the cases, mothers were subjected to criminal charges for not obtaining prenatal care, which is particularly fucked considering that we do not have socialized healthcare in this country and both pregnancy and childbirth are extraordinarily expensive.
It is understandable that people would have some issues with mothers who, for instance, did meth or smoked crack during their pregnancies. However, the problem with criminalizing such behavior is that mothers with addiction issues would be less likely to seek help and make them more likely to hide their habits from their doctors. (The vast majority of people in this study were turned in by doctors or nurses.) We want people in those situations to get help. Imagine being a woman with a fentanyl addiction in a state where abortion is illegal. You have no choice but to have the baby and no ability to seek help without risking prison time.
According to Pregnancy Justice, “[p]rosecutors initiated cases in 23 states: Alabama, California, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. The majority of the reported cases occurred in South Carolina (381), Oklahoma (222), and Alabama (204).”
There were also 13 cases in which those charged were seeking abortion services in some capacity. Whether or not they actually even went through with anything, we don’t really know. The study’s authors note that “these cases show that even when abortion is not charged, pregnant people’s contemplation of abortion can be weaponized against them.”
That’s not great!
So much can go wrong during a pregnancy, whether it be something that the mother has done or not. No one should live in fear that if something happens to their child they could end up in prison.
Abortion Is Back On the Ballot!
This November, voters in Idaho, Nevada, Virginia, and Missouri will face referendums on the future of abortion rights in their respective states.
In Idaho, Nevada, and Virginia, the ballot measures are aimed at expanding, protecting, or creating abortion rights, but the measure in Missouri is about restricting them. Because the right-wing loons in the state are still mad that Missourians voted in 2024 to approve a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion — and did so while still, for the most part, voting for Republicans. They’ve been trying since 2024 to undo that, often claiming that Missouri voters were just too stupid to know what the amendment did when they voted for it.
PREVIOUSLY!
Voters thought they could have their abortion rights and their shitty Republican politicians, too, but that doesn’t seem to be working out so well for them.
In hopes of enticing Missouri voters to give up their reproductive rights, lawmakers in the state have also included language on the ballot measure to “prohibit gender transition procedures for minors,” which is already illegal in the state. Why? Because pretty much the only thing Republicans have right now, other than, according to Donald Trump, at least two good butts, is their hysteria over “transing the kids.” (Nota bene: The less conservatives understand a particular issue, the more grammatically ridiculous and nonsensical their verbiage gets.)
In Nevada, abortion is currently legal, but this ballot measure would enshrine the right to it in the state’s constitution. Voters already approved the measure with 65 percent of the vote, but in order to pass a constitutional amendment in Nevada, voters need to approve an initiative in two elections in even numbered years. If it passes, Nevada residents will be constitutionally guaranteed the right to an abortion up until the point of fetal viability.
Virginia’s measure is similar — abortions up to 26 weeks and 6 days of pregnancy are currently legal in the state, but this would enshrine that right in the state’s constitution, making it much less easy for Republicans to mess with.
Idaho, however, is quite a bit different. The state currently has one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the nation, but a “yes” vote on Proposition 1 would establish a right to reproductive freedom and privacy that would allow for a smoother challenge to the state’s current terrible laws. It would also be pretty fantastic for any women in the state who may perhaps need, at some point, to see a damned gynecologist. Right now people are waiting up to 9 months in Boise for an appointment, which certainly seems like a particularly dicey period of time for anyone having a baby in the state.
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Even Anti-Abortion Mormon Ob-Gyns Are Not Loving The Idaho Restrictions
This week the Salt Lake Tribune featured a rather interesting conversation with Heather Pugmire, a Mormon ob-gyn in Idaho — which, as mentioned, could very well legalize abortion in one of the most restrictive states in the US. Pugmire, who never performed abortions in the first place, explains that as the law stands now, it makes it very, very difficult for her to do her job and to recruit other ob-gyns to her practice. There are no dedicated ob-gyn residencies in Idaho, and weirdly enough, pretty much no one is champing at the bit to move to a state wherein they may at some point have to choose between the wellbeing of a patient and going to prison.
That’s probably why there are just 170 ob-gyns in the state, for around 800,000 women over the age of 15. That is 4,705 patients per ob-gyn, which seems like kind of a lot.
Pugmire explained that one issue with the Idaho law is that it doesn’t just deal with elective abortion, but with every kind of fetal death. When it first passed, she explained, it didn’t make a distinction between elective abortions and miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies.
She also explained:
The precise concern is that every difficult decision I make is going to be scrutinized by a lawyer and then potentially go in front of a jury.
So I am questioning, if I do what is right in this situation, is that going to put me behind bars? Is that going to take away my license? Is that going to get my name plastered on a billboard and my kids bullied because other kids think their mom is a baby killer?
A second thing it does is hinder my ability to compassionately care for my patients.
I had a patient whose water broke at 14 weeks. Babies can’t survive earlier than 22 weeks — and that’s pushing it. The umbilical cord was coming out. She was not going to be able to keep the pregnancy until 22 weeks. It was certain.
But the baby was still alive. In those cases, usually what we do is give women medicine to help them deliver. That helps avoid infection and hemorrhaging. And I will sit and hold their hand and help them grieve. But, in this case, I had to spend almost two hours calling my lawyer, calling my CEO, calling three other doctors to be able to put statements in the medical record that I’m not the only one who thinks this is the right way to go.
Say the pregnancy will make the patients sick, but it’s not necessarily going to kill them right now — and I know that there are laws that say it doesn’t have to be right now, it doesn’t have to be immediate. However, that’s a very wide zone. For women whose babies have lethal anomalies, I have to transfer them out of state where the laws are less strict. There’s no other option for me.
So instead of them being able to grieve that loss in a place where they have their community, their faith, their family, their insurance to pay for things, they have to go somewhere else, even though the outcome is still the same.
Yeah, that’s not great!
Is Pugmire going to vote for Prop 1 though? She’s not sure, actually, because while she says she could be a “competent and compassionate physician under Prop 1 easier than the status quo” and she was 100 percent for it initially, the prophets of the LDS church have come out explicitly against it and now she’s torn. Because of how she believes they are actual prophets who “receive revelation.”
It will probably not surprise you to know that no Mormon prophets have ever been pregnant or even had to go to the gyno for a pap smear, on account of how they are all cisgender men.
In 77 of the cases, mothers were subjected to criminal charges for not obtaining prenatal care...
well THAT is some bullshit.
"The vast majority of people in this study were turned in by doctors or nurses."
Way to disincentivize people from getting prenatal care, fuckheads...
/FFS