Pregnancy Criminalization

As Wisconsin Democrats Push First-Ever Pregnancy Loss Protections, State Republicans Advance Embryo ‘Personhood’

PUBLISHED 1/17/2026 by

In late 2025, Wisconsin Senate Republicans passed SB553, a bill that defines embryos, fertilized eggs and fetuses as “unborn children” and “human beings” from the moment of fertilization. The bill passed with the support of every Republican senator and opposition from all Democrats. SB 553 also attempts to redefine the word “abortion,” asserting that a termination performed to prevent the death of a pregnant woman is not an abortion if it is not “designed or intended to kill the unborn child.”

Doctors also warn that SB 553 quietly functions as a personhood law by stating that once an egg is a human being from the moment of fertilization. By granting fertilized eggs status as human beings, the bill is giving those eggs legal rights which are equal to those of their pregnant mothers. While Gov. Tony Evers has said he will veto the bill if it reaches his desk, Wisconsin state Sen. Kelda Roys says its passage reveals Republican lawmakers’ intent.

Roys recently introduced the Pregnancy Loss Protection Act, the first bill of its kind in Wisconsin. Its goal is to prevent overzealous prosecutors or law enforcement officers from targeting people who experience miscarriage or stillbirth, while also pushing back against a broader Republican effort to confer legal personhood on embryos from the moment of fertilization.

A Very Bad Year for Women’s Health

PUBLISHED 12/24/2025 by

When I started writing for The Contrarian, a funny-not-funny inside joke was whether there would be enough fodder for a weekly democracy column that overtly centers gender. I think you already know the punchline. Suffice it to say, I did not miss a single Wednesday in all of 2025.

For my final entry of the year, we thought it worthwhile to offer a snapshot—a year’s worth of reporting on the depth of damage this administration has wreaked on women’s health, with real-time Contrarian reporting noted.

A Bill Criminalizing Abortion Failed in the South Carolina Senate, But S.C. Prosecutors Have Long Treated Pregnancy as a Crime

PUBLISHED 11/24/2025 by

We have to talk about South Carolina.

Last week, what could have become the most punitive abortion law in the U.S., SB 323, failed in the South Carolina Senate. The bill proposed banning abortion in almost all circumstances, criminalizing people who sought abortion care, and removed any exceptions for rape, incest or fetal anomaly currently written into the state’s already strict six-week ban.

The defeat of SB 323 is a victory that was won by dedicated and fierce advocates from across the state and across the country. But South Carolina has been actively engaged in policing the bodies of pregnant women, and in criminalizing pregnancy, for decades.

The prosecutorial “hold my beer” approach to criminalizing abortion shows us not only just broken the criminal legal system is, but also, just how little regard they have for the humanity of people with the capacity for pregnancy. 

The New York Times’ Recent ‘Abortion Pollution’ Story Serves the Antiabortion Agenda

PUBLISHED 10/17/2025 by

For the last three years, Students for Life of America (SFLA) has sought to use environmental concerns to attack abortion rights, claiming—without scientific evidence—that the medication mifepristone contaminates U.S. water supplies and threatens wildlife, the environment and potentially human health.

A recent New York Times article amplified this antiabortion effort, presenting these claims without substantial context. The article does not include interviews with anyone informed about the politics behind the campaign or the science of mifepristone in wastewater. Only a brief mention—seven paragraphs in—notes that environmental experts have dismissed SFLA’s claims, before returning to treating the claims as a legitimate concern. 

“There is absolutely no evidence that this is an environmental issue,” said Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Pharmaceutical waste can be a big issue when we’re talking about widely used drugs, but to somehow point to mifepristone as a bad actor here is completely disingenuous.”

Jack Vanden Heuvel, a molecular toxicologist at Pennsylvania State University, agreed: “Most wastewater treatment plants are very effective at getting rid of any mifepristone that is there.” He described SFLA’s position as “a pretty weakly supported argument.”

Americans Oppose Criminalizing Abortion. Too Many Policymakers Aren’t Listening.

PUBLISHED 10/3/2025 by and

Since the Supreme Court decided on Dobbs v. Jackson and overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, more than half of U.S. states have passed laws that dramatically restrict and criminalize abortion. These laws assign criminal penalties—including fines and prison time—not only to healthcare providers who provide abortions or write prescriptions for abortion pills, but in some cases, also to people who assist abortion seekers. Yet, a growing body of research suggests these punitive measures do not reflect the views of most Americans.

Trump and RFK’s Pseudoscience Is Another Tool to Control Women

PUBLISHED 10/2/2025 by

We have reached the point in American politics at which a sitting U.S. president sees fit to decree pregnant women must “tough it out.”

We all would be wise to strenuously push back on junk science—not just for our safety here and now, but in service of a future that doesn’t create new inroads for punishment of pregnancy.

The War on Drugs Was a War on Black Mothers

PUBLISHED 9/29/2025 by

In the late 20th century, the so-called “crack baby epidemic” became a media obsession. Politicians, prosecutors and even physicians bought into a false narrative: that poor Black women who used cocaine during pregnancy were dooming their children to lives of permanent brain damage, misery and crime. The stories were sensational—and wrong. What these accounts ignored were the actual conditions of women’s lives: poverty, lack of healthcare, untreated trauma and mental illness. Instead of compassion, women like Regina McKnight—raped, grieving, depressed and self-medicating—were met with prosecution, prison sentences and public shaming.

The truth is, there was no epidemic of “biologically inferior” babies. Rigorous scientific research—largely disregarded by mainstream media—showed that cocaine exposure did not cause the catastrophic outcomes predicted by pundits. Yet the racialized panic over “crack babies” justified criminalizing pregnancy, targeting Black mothers, and fueling the broader war on drugs. These myths, and the policies they spawned, continue to shape how our legal and healthcare systems treat women—especially women of color—today.

[An excerpt from Michele Goodwin’s book Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.]

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The road to recovery—and the right to recovery—is essential to a free and fair democracy. This essay is part of a new multimedia collection exploring the intersections of addiction, recovery and gender justice. The Right to Recovery Is Essential to Democracy is a collaboration between Ms. and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health at Georgetown Law, in honor of National Recovery Month.

Keeping Score: Charlie Kirk’s ‘Professor Watchlist’ Put Educators at Risk; Epstein Survivors on Capitol Hill; Lawmakers Condemn RFK’s ‘War on Science’

PUBLISHED 9/15/2025 by | UPDATED 9/16/2025 at 9:11 A.M. PT

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:.
—Karen Attiah, a Washington Post columnist, said she was fired over social media posts she made following the killing of Charlie Kirk. “I did my journalistic duty, reminding people that despite President Trump’s partisan rushes to judgement, no suspect or motive had been identified in the killing…”
—Epstein survivors spoke out in support of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
—Missouri state lawmakers held a sit-in to protest redistricting.
—Texas banned trans people from using public bathrooms.
—Senators pushed back against RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine views.
—Colleges and universities experience a chilling effect of Trump’s war on DEI.
—Being stalked increases the risk of heart disease.
—Tea Party Patriots co-founder said they plan to pressure Senate Republicans to attach the SAVE Act to must-pass funding legislation in September.

… and more.

Texas’ Newest Abortion Law Allows $100,000 Rewards for Snitching on Pregnant Women

PUBLISHED 9/12/2025 by | UPDATED 9/25/2025 at 10:17 A.M. PT

Texas Republicans recently passed another law to prevent abortions—one that rewards family members with at least $100,000 for snitching.

House Bill 7 passed the Texas Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to sign it by Sept. 24, which is the deadline for him to take action on it. 

It would allow private citizens to file lawsuits against any person intending to help obtain abortion pills in the state, anyone distributing abortion pills or any company shipping abortion pills into Texas. If the lawsuit is successful, they’d receive at least $100,000 for their efforts.

There’s a caveat: If the private citizen is not related to a pregnant woman seeking abortion pills, they would only receive $10,000, with $90,000 going to the charity of their choice, if they win their lawsuit. If the private citizen is related to a pregnant woman seeking abortion pills, however, they’d get to keep the full $100,000.

Plus, in a dangerous twist for medical providers across the country, a woman who was pregnant and used abortion medications to end her pregnancy can actually turn around and sue her own provider in an attempt to get $100,000.   

War on Women Report: State Department Mass-Burns Contraceptives; GOP Budget Decimates Medicaid; Texas Crisis Pregnancy Center Funds Paid for CEO’s Smoke Shop

PUBLISHED 7/30/2025 by and

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide—the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.” We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—After a highly publicized trial, a jury acquitted music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs of the most serious charges—sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
—Texas’ funding pipeline for antiabortion crisis pregnancy centers allowed CPCs to spend millions of taxpayer dollars with little oversight into how the money was used.
—A Texas man is suing a doctor in California who he claims sent abortion pills in the mail to his girlfriend.

… and more.