More women are charged with pregnancy-related crimes since Roe’s end, study finds

It became more common for authorities to charge women with crimes related to their pregnancies after the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, a new study found — even if they’re almost never accused of violating abortion bans.

In the year after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the nationwide right to abortion in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, at least 210 women across the country were charged with crimes related to their pregnancies, according to the report released by Pregnancy Justice, an advocacy organization. That’s the highest number the group has identified over any 12-month period in research projects that have looked back as far as 1973.

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. Bach said that when the woman went to make funeral arrangements, the funeral home alerted authorities and the woman was charged with homicide.

Because of confidentiality provisions in the study, Bach would not reveal more details on the case. But it was one of 22 cases in the study that involved the death of a fetus or infant.

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