Pregnant women and pregnancy as part of the reproductive justice movement

Persistent efforts to treat pregnant women and pregnancy as a proper subject of the criminal law have significant implications for reproductive justice and women's public health status. While efforts to re-criminalize abortion continue, the impact of state feticide and unborn victims of violence act laws on pregnant women have gone largely unrecognized. Data collection concerning arrests of women in which pregnancy is a necessary element of the “crime” reveal that these laws are providing justification for ongoing efforts to treat certain pregnant and birthing women as criminals. Many of these cases involve women who love their children but are unable to overcome an addiction problem in the short-term of a pregnancy. Cases, however, also include pregnant women who drink alcohol, refuse physician recommendations regarding method of birth, have suffered stillbirths, have been in a dangerous location while pregnant, or who have attempted suicide.

Prosecutions of pregnant women cannot be separated from attempts to re-criminalize abortion. The legal basis for such criminalization as well as the ongoing public relations campaign to characterize abortion as murder and to suggest that women who have abortions are different from those who have babies profoundly affect how all pregnant women, including those going to term, are treated by the criminal justice system. This means that efforts to ensure reproductive justice and improve both maternal and fetal health require attention to these cases. The fact that efforts to re-criminalize abortion necessarily implicate birthing issues creates possibilities for alliances between pro-choice and birthing rights activists.