Book contents
- Policing the Womb
- Policing the Womb
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Pregnancy and State Power
- 3 Creeping Criminalization of Pregnancy across the United States
- 4 Abortion Law
- 5 Changing Roles of Doctors and Nurses: Hospital Snitches and Police Informants
- 6 Revisiting the Fiduciary Relationship
- 7 Creating Criminals: Race, Stereotypes, and Collateral Damage
- 8 The Pregnancy Penalty: When the State Gets It Wrong
- 9 Policing Beyond the Border
- 10 Lessons for Law and Society: A Reproductive Justice New Deal or Bill of Rights
- 11 Conclusion
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
3 - Creeping Criminalization of Pregnancy across the United States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 February 2020
- Policing the Womb
- Policing the Womb
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Pregnancy and State Power
- 3 Creeping Criminalization of Pregnancy across the United States
- 4 Abortion Law
- 5 Changing Roles of Doctors and Nurses: Hospital Snitches and Police Informants
- 6 Revisiting the Fiduciary Relationship
- 7 Creating Criminals: Race, Stereotypes, and Collateral Damage
- 8 The Pregnancy Penalty: When the State Gets It Wrong
- 9 Policing Beyond the Border
- 10 Lessons for Law and Society: A Reproductive Justice New Deal or Bill of Rights
- 11 Conclusion
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
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 WombInvisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, pp. 28 - 45Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020