News
‘Hellscape’: Women Increasingly Charged With Pregnancy-Related Crimes After Roe’s End
Women are increasingly being charged with pregnancy-related crimes since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that had found a constitutional right to abortion. Abortion bans are playing a role.
A new study, “Pregnancy As a Crime: A Preliminary Report on the First Year After Dobbs,” found 210 cases of pregnancy-related crimes were charged in the first year since the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court ruling that rescinded the constitutional right to abortion. That is the largest number of cases in any 12-month period since the year Roe v. Wade was decided.
“Most of the cases identified were in just two states: Alabama and Oklahoma,” according to the Associated Press. Essentially half of all cases (104) were charged in just one state: Alabama. Oklahoma ranked second with 68.
“Wendy Bach, a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law and one of the lead researchers on the project, said one of the cases was when a woman delivered a stillborn baby at her home about six or seven months into pregnancy,” the AP reports. “Bach said that when the woman went to make funeral arrangements, the funeral home alerted authorities and the woman was charged with homicide.”
READ MORE: Trump and Vance Face Criminal Charges Over ‘Pet-Eating’ Lies
Mary Ruth Ziegler, a legal historian focusing on abortion at University of California Davis School of Law, told CNN, “Prosecutions of pregnant women for conduct during pregnancy didn’t start with the anti-abortion movement, but they definitely accelerated with the anti-abortion movement.”
Lourdes Rivera, president of Pregnancy Justice, the nonprofit organization that released the study, told the AP, “It’s an environment where pregnancy loss is potentially criminally suspect.”
Rivera, speaking to Jezebel, “said the report’s findings reflect how ‘post-Dobbs, abortion bans have created a chilling effect, an environment for law enforcement to misapply existing criminal laws and the ideology of fetal personhood’ to wrongly criminalize a range of legal behaviors from pregnant people.”
Earlier this year the Republican National Committee released its first new platform in eight years. Some media reports claimed it was “softening” on abortion, and some far-right activists blasted the RNC for that stance. But the new platform included language paving the way for what some call fetal personhood, the belief that human life begins at conception and therefore a fertilized egg is immediately conferred the same civil rights as every other person in America.
CNN reports fetal personhood “is at the root of many of the allegations” examined in the Pregnancy Justice report.
“The goal was not just to have these individual people go to prison, it was meant to set a precedent about what fetal rights look like,” Ziegler said. “So going for the easiest target made sense.”
CNN adds that “the data from June 2022 to June 2023 shows that the vast majority of pregnancy-related charges alleged substance use during pregnancy, according to the new report from Pregnancy Justice. In more than half of the cases, substance use was the only allegation made against the defendant.”
The vast majority of the defendants were low income, and proof that the fetus was actually harmed was not required for most of the 210 charges.
“About half of cases were in Alabama, where residents voted in 2018 to amend the Constitution to include protections for unborn life and where the state Supreme Court ruled in February that frozen embryos are children and those who destroy them can be held liable for wrongful death,” CNN noted.
READ MORE: Trump in Georgia Goes Off-Script, Appears to Call for Assault Weapons Ban
“The People of Alabama have declared the public policy of this State to be that unborn human life is sacred,” Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote in his concurring opinion earlier this year. “We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness.”
Pregnancy Justice on social media explained that after the Dobbs decision, “State actors are emboldened, putting pregnant people under INCREASED surveillance and making a dire situation even worse.”
Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, and contributing editor for the Atlantic weighed in on Alabama Public Radio’s report from the Associated Press.
“Alabama. Elected Tommy Tuberville. Katie Britt. Kay Ivey. A Hellscape of racism and cruelty,” Ornstein wrote, referring to the state’s Republican freshmen U.S. Senators and longtime Republican governor.
Alabama. Elected Tommy Tuberville. Katie Britt. Kay Ivey. A Hellscape of racism and cruelty https://t.co/qrejYfmEtk
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) September 25, 2024
READ MORE: ‘Conditional Adherence’: Speaker Johnson Slammed for Wavering on Certifying 2024 Election
Enjoy this piece?
… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.
NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.
Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.
 |
Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
