According to data just released by the organization Pregnancy Justice, since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, some 902 women have been slapped with criminal charges for alleged crimes prosecutors say they committed against their own fetuses — mostly involving the “crime” of being addicted to drugs while pregnant. In 13 cases, prosecutors claimed that the woman charged had researched, attempted, or obtained an abortion, and used those allegations against her in arguing that she should be jailed or otherwise punished. In 871 of the allegations, prosecutors didn’t even have to prove that the woman charged had actually harmed her fetus or child.
These charges have overwhelmingly been brought in states that criminalize abortion, and overwhelmingly against poor women. And the 902 number is almost surely an undercount.
Source: Pregnancy Justice
Look: No one thinks it’s a great idea to use drugs while pregnant. But abortion-hostile states put women in an impossible position. If a woman is struggling with substance abuse disorder and finds herself pregnant, she cannot get a legal abortion across most of the American south and midwest. And she is also unlikely to find a rehab center that will take her: Fewer than 10 percent of drug treatment facilities have specialized programs for pregnant women. We know that some 70 percent of women with substance abuse disorders are mothers, and yet fewer than five percent of drug treatment facilities offer childcare. While substance abuse can hit anyone, it is heavily concentrated in lower-income communities, and women who need treatment for it disproportionately rely on Medicaid — and yet most of the states with the highest numbers of prosecutions of mothers with addition also have not expanded Medicaid, making it ever harder for low-income pregnant women to pay for the treatment they need.
Substance abuse is now one of the leading causes of maternal death in America, in part because of policies implemented by “pro-life” politicians.
