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3 - Creeping Criminalization of Pregnancy across the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2020

Michele Goodwin
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Summary

Today, the full scope of liberty-infringing pregnancy interventions, including threats of arrest and other coercive conduct that does not necessarily lead to criminal punishment, is unknown. There is no national database, and any state-level record-keeping related to mothers prosecuted under the guise of fetal protection can be difficult to access. Reporters like Nina Martin file “multiple information requests to identify” those arrested under child endangerment laws and child abuse statutes, which now apply to fetuses in a number of states. Vigilant investigation in Alabama revealed dramatic undercounting by “more than three times the number previously identified.” Evidence of arrests and prosecutions gathered by reporters, as well as national and international advocacy organizations such as National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Amnesty International, indicate the numbers of women vulnerable to pregnancy policing are on the rise. New prosecutions of pregnant women for acts of feticide and attempted feticide illustrate this shift; such prosecutions simply did not occur before.

Type
Chapter
Information
Policing the Womb
Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood
, pp. 28 - 45
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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