At least 200 people in the United States were prosecuted for conduct related to their pregnancies in the year following the overturning of Roe v Wade, marking the highest number of such cases in a single year on record, according to a new report.
The study, compiled by the advocacy group Pregnancy Justice, covers the period from June 2022 to June 2023. Researchers warn the figure is likely an undercount. The vast majority of cases did not involve abortions; only five mentioned allegations of abortion or exploring the possibility of one. Instead, most cases centred on substance use during pregnancy, with prosecutors using statutes that criminalise child abuse, neglect or endangerment.
More than 100 of the recorded prosecutions took place in Alabama, a state whose supreme court recently ruled that embryos are 'extrauterine children'. In many instances, prosecutors did not need to prove harm to a fetus or infant, only that the defendant posed a 'risk' to the pregnancy—a standard critics say can criminalise behaviour based on stereotypes.
‘Pregnancy loss is suspect,’ said Wendy Bach, a University of Tennessee law professor and the report’s principal investigator. ‘Rather than meeting a pregnancy loss with care and support, we are meeting it with criminal suspicion, investigation and prosecution.’
Examples include the case of Ashley Caswell, arrested in Alabama in 2021 for allegedly testing positive for methamphetamine and endangering her fetus, and Amari Marsh, a 23-year-old in South Carolina who miscarried and was charged with murder by child abuse, later cleared by a grand jury. Over three-quarters of defendants were low-income, and more than half of the cases stemmed from information obtained in medical settings.
