Donald Trump is currently bragging about having ended the constitutional right to abortion while simultaneously—and creepily—declaring himself a great “protector” of women. Meanwhile, in the real world, the fall of Roe v. Wade has led to a massive spike in people facing criminal charges related to their pregnancies. Some protection.
Regrettably, the criminalization of pregnancy is nothing new. Pregnant people are arrested for using illicit substances during their pregnancies, a repugnant legacy of the “War on Drugs” and the moral panic around “crack babies.” But pregnant people have also been arrested for using legal substances, such as prescribed opioids, nicotine, and alcohol and for attempting suicide during their pregnancies.
Even before Roe was overturned in June 2022, Pregnancy Justice found that nearly 1,400 people were arrested and charged with pregnancy-related crimes from 2006 to 2022. And that number was a huge leap from the previous 33 years of legal abortion, where only 413 criminal cases were brought.
The demise of Roe, unsurprisingly, has turbo-charged these attacks on pregnant people, with 210 people being criminally charged in just the first year after Roe was reversed. The conservative majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization refused to weigh in on fetal personhood—laws that give fetuses the same rights as actual live people. By refusing to address it, Dobbs left the door open for states to enforce those laws. If the fetus has the same rights as the pregnant person, that person can be prosecuted for anything that harms the fetus.
Besides that paradigm shift, once abortion became illegal or largely unavailable in multiple states, people could also be charged for anything law enforcement or medical personnel decided was an attempt to end a pregnancy. So, people have been prosecuted for miscarriages and stillbirths. They’ve also been prosecuted for seeking care after a self-managed abortion.
Of those 210 arrests, almost half—104—came in just one state, Alabama, a state with a total abortion ban with no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. Abortions can only be performed in the state if the life or health of the pregnant person is at risk. The state often prosecutes pregnant people under its chemical endangerment statute, which makes it a felony to expose a child—which, in Alabama, remember, includes a fetus—to circumstances where controlled substances are made or distributed. Pregnant women and new mothers are disproportionately prosecuted, with one county charging women at a rate 12 times that of men.
Alabama’s zeal for arresting pregnant people is matched only by its utter disregard for the health of those pregnant people. The state has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the country, with 64.63 deaths per 100,000 live births. That’s almost double the national rate of 34.09, and the United States already has the highest rate of maternal mortality among all high-income countries. Black people in Alabama are twice as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications, a racial disparity that exists all across the country.
There are plenty of reasons why Alabama fails to adequately care for pregnant people. Over one-third of counties in the state are maternity deserts with no hospital or OB/GYN providers. Since the Dobbs decision, over 20% fewer medical students have applied for OB/GYN residency programs in the state.
Alabama has refused to enact the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion, a step that would increase access to prenatal care and decrease the likelihood of hospitals closing in a state where four hospitals closed in the last year. The state has no paid family leave, even though it is indisputable that paid leave results in better maternal and infant incomes.
Alabama isn’t really an outlier. Overall, states with restrictive abortion policies generally refuse to pass these sorts of supportive policies. This refusal is, in part, why states with abortion bans have far higher maternal mortality rates than states where abortion is widely available.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump
So, what is the Trump-Vance plan to address these health disparities and tackle a country where over 80% of maternal mortality deaths are preventable? Trump, despite his comical boast that he would be “great for women and their reproductive rights,” has said he will defer to states that want to prosecute people for having abortions.
His running mate, JD Vance, has long been a creep about wanting to spy into the lives of pregnant people. Along with 29 other hyper-conservative members of Congress, he wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra in 2023 to complain about a proposed rule that would shield the medical records of people who sought abortion care in a state where such care was legal.
Vance has also called for a national abortion ban and a “federal response” to stop people from traveling to obtain an abortion in a state where the procedure is legal. Vance went on to speculate about a world where, if Ohio had an abortion ban, “every day George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California.” Vance’s solution? “Hopefully we get to a point where Ohio bans abortion in California.”
In contrast to the empty promises of Trump and Vance, both Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz have made commitments to the safety and health of pregnant people. As a senator, Harris co-sponsored legislation related to improving maternal health outcomes, particularly for Black people, efforts she continued as vice president. She also called for expanded postpartum coverage.
As governor of Minnesota, Walz signed a bill that declared abortion a fundamental right and another that eliminated medically unnecessary restrictions. Perhaps most importantly, in light of Vance’s desire to track pregnant people across the country, Walz issued an executive order the day after the Dobbs decision prohibiting state agencies from assisting in any criminal or civil proceedings related to someone obtaining a legal abortion in Minnesota. The legislature later passed a statute barring the release of health records to other states investigating or enforcing their own abortion restrictions—the exact thing Vance is mad about.
One ticket will make pregnancy riskier to the health and freedom of pregnant people under the guise of leaving things to the states. The other would protect abortion nationwide. There’s really no comparison.
