The Most Important Abortion Races You've Never Heard Of

Our election guide for sheriffs, prosecutors, and county coroners

When Keith Fagundes ran for his third term as district attorney in Kings County, his opponent made a simple pledge: she wouldn’t prosecute people for miscarriages and stillbirths.

During Fagundes’ tenure, the California DA had jailed two women on murder charges, claiming that drug use caused their pregnancy losses. Chelsea Becker spent 16 months in jail before a local judge dismissed the charges; Adora Perez was sentenced to 11 years in prison before her case was dismissed, too.

Fagundes’ Republican primary opponent, Sarah Hacker, made his history of pregnancy criminalization the centerpiece of her campaign. She won by nearly 15 points—just days before the end of Roe in June 2022.

Let Fagundes’ career—and his political demise—serve as a reminder in this key election year: pregnancy criminalization is on the ballot.

All too often, elections for your local DA or sheriff fall through the cracks. Voters might leave that section of the ballot blank, or mindlessly select the only candidate on the ballot. Sheriffs often run unopposed, or incumbents cruise to victory no matter their record—or only a small fraction of the electorate votes in sheriff races.

But these races aren’t apolitical or inconsequential: district attorneys and sheriffs have broad, almost unilateral discretion to dole out criminal charges over pregnancy outcomes. Across states with abortion bans, the variance of county-by-county rates of pregnancy criminalization speaks to just how much discretion individual DAs and sheriffs have over these cases.

Dana Sussman, executive vice president of the legal advocacy organization Pregnancy Justice, tells Abortion, Every Day:

“Our work shows, time and again, that the majority of pregnancy-related prosecutions are concentrated in certain counties, meaning that specific elected officials have decided it is a priority of their office and position to investigate and prosecute pregnant people.”

Nearly all states hold elections for district attorneys and sheriffs: Bolts Magazine offers this excellent table of when states hold these elections. And many of the states voting on law enforcement officials this year lead the country in criminal charges against pregnant people. For instance: Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, and more.

Here’s where you come in: You can familiarize yourself with the records of your local law enforcement officials and learn who’s on the ballot. You can ask candidates where they stand on criminalizing pregnancy outcomes like miscarriage and abortion—and pressure them to pledge, on the record, that they won’t.

The anti-abortion movement has excelled at politics for decades, in part by flooding the judiciary with anti-abortion judges and dominating state legislatures and local politics. If we want to protect pregnant people’s rights and enact a reproductive freedom agenda, that includes far more than who we elect to the White House, governor’s office, or Congress.

It’s time to stop leaving local law enforcement races on the table. Here’s Abortion, Every Day’s guide to doing so.

What We’re Up Against

Miscarriage, stillbirth, pregnancy loss, and self-managed abortion aren’t crimes, and no state permits the prosecution of patients. Supposedly.

As faithful Abortion, Every Day readers know, sheriffs and prosecutors will often act on their own biases to misapply and weaponize the law. We’ve written about people charged with ‘child endangerment,’ ‘abuse of a corpse,’ ‘manslaughter,’ and even ‘murder’ for losing their pregnancy, or disposing of pregnancy remains in a manner that personally upsets cops.

Since the end of Roe, hundreds of women have been arrested and brought up on pregnancy-related charges. This spike in criminalization comes at the same time legislators are increasingly pushing bills that would punish abortion patients as murderers. This year, for the first time ever, a major national anti-abortion organization endorsed a bill that would jail patients. As AED has long-warned, we’re entering a chilling new era where pregnancy criminalization is increasingly normalized.

That’s why candidates must be held accountable—forced on record to state whether they would prosecute someone for their pregnancy outcome.

Candidates should also know just how unpopular it is to arrest pregnant women. “Our research also shows that 2026 voters strongly oppose pregnancy criminalization, including charging people with a crime for being pregnant and having a substance use disorder,” Sussman says.

Again, Hacker defeated Fagundes by 15 points before the Supreme Court overturned Roe—voters have only become more mobilized on this issue in the years since.

A Snapshot of Who We’re Electing

Speaking of local law enforcement bringing their biases to the table, here’s a sampling of the sheriffs and DAs who’ve been elected across the country—and how they’ve gone after pregnant women in their communities.

In Alabama, Etowah County Sheriff Jonathan Horton is seeking reelection for a third term. He won his primary on May 19.

Does Etowah County sound familiar to you? If so, it’s probably because Alabama leads the nation in pregnancy-related criminal charges—and Etowah has the highest share out of any county in the state. While just 2% of Alabama’s population lives in Etowah, it represented over 20% of pregnancy-related prosecutions in 2022.

AL.com reported that in one month in 2022 alone, as many as 12 people were held in the county’s detention center on suspicion of drug use while pregnant or postpartum. At the time, it wasn’t uncommon for women arrested for any reason in Etowah to be given both drug and pregnancy tests—a way for the county to tack on yet another charge: chemical endangerment of a child. (This happened often enough that women there call it getting “hit with a chemical.”)

The sheriff’s office has faced lawsuits alleging egregious mistreatment of pregnant people targeted and wrongly jailed over alleged marijuana use, including one woman who wasn’t even pregnant but was denied a pregnancy test to prove it. Another pregnant woman was denied adequate medical care and gave birth on the jail’s shower floor.

Women recount being jailed despite having high-risk pregnancies, while others were separated from their newborns within hours postpartum. Many were forced to remain in jail indefinitely (and in at least one case made to sleep on the floor for weeks), subject to unsafe and unsanitary conditions—because no rehab centers would accept them.

Why? Because there was no evidence they struggled with addiction.

Surely Sheriff Horton should face a question or two about his office’s treatment of pregnant women before November?

In Georgia, Brunswick District Attorney Keith Higgins’ office charged Alexia Moore with homicide over an alleged abortion in April. Higgins is trying to distance himself from the case, claiming local police charged Moore without consulting him. Nonetheless, he hasn’t moved to drop the charges against her. Higgins will be up for reelection in 2028.

Kentucky prosecutor Miranda King is leading the case against Melinda Spencer—who faces charges of abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence, and concealing the birth of an infant, over her alleged self-managed abortion. King initially tried to charge Spencer with ‘fetal homicide’ before conceding that this wasn’t permissible under Kentucky law. She did, however, needlessly state, “I sought this job with the intention of being a pro-life prosecutor.”

King was elected in November 2024 to a six-year term as Commonwealth Attorney and will be up for reelection in 2030.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In Minnesota, former public defender turned Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty pledged to cease the practice of criminalizing pregnancy in 2024. She collaborated with Pregnancy Justice on its toolkit for best practices for law enforcement to respect the rights of pregnant people, and adhere to medical facts surrounding pregnancy and substance use.

Voters in all counties have the power to push local officials running for these positions to make similar pledges.

Let’s Talk About County Coroners

When prosecutors bring criminal charges against a pregnant person, they often rely on help from county coroners. Coroners and medical examiners may help law enforcement build cases against pregnant women by finding them responsible for the death of an ‘infant,’ and fuel media misinformation by using politically charged language to talk about women’s pregnancy remains.

In nearly half of all states, county coroners are elected. Nearly all states require a fetal death report to be filed for pregnancy losses past a certain week in gestation, sometimes requiring examination by the county coroner.

The CDC notes that “in most states, coroners are not required to be physicians or forensic pathologists” but receive “specific death investigation training” in accordance with state laws. Yet, their findings about pregnancy outcomes are often unquestioningly accepted as fact.

Last September, AED spoke with the Kentucky coroner overseeing the case of Laken Snelling, the 21-year-old college student charged with ‘manslaughter’ and ‘abuse of a corpse’ over the ‘death’ of her supposed ‘infant.’ Coroner Gary Ginn told AED that when his office refers to an “infant,” they might actually be talking about a fetus.

What’s your county coroner’s stance on whether an embryo is an ‘infant’? Do they believe women who miscarry are potentially responsible for the ‘death’ of an ‘infant’? Is your county coroner—or are your candidate(s) for coroner—familiar with Pregnancy Justice’s guidelines for medical examiners to avoid aiding in the criminalization of pregnancy?

As Pregnancy Justice’s guidelines point out, medical examiners have “tremendous influence” in criminal cases, and “play a pivotal role in ensuring that police and prosecutors are relying on evidence that is supported by accurate and reliable medical science.”

Pregnancy Justice also note that medical examiners should refrain from relying on debunked, faulty evaluations of pregnancy remains—such as the lung float test. They should also be conscious of both medical racism and how certain language in fetal death reports may be used against bereaved mothers to criminalize pregnancy loss.

How You Can Help

Too often, sheriffs and district attorneys who prosecute pregnant people run unopposed, or are never publicly challenged on their positions. But they should be. We need our communities to remember that there are no laws that criminalize pregnancy outcomes, and that over 80% of U.S. voters say the government shouldn’t intervene in our pregnancies at all.

Here are some ways you can help.

Find out if your state elects district attorneys, sheriffs, and coroners. We’ve linked to resources from Bolts Magazine and the CDC that provide state-by-state details. Do a little digging to find out what their positions are, or if they have a history of criminalizing pregnancy outcomes.

Get local media involved. Local newspapers, radio stations, and other outlets can carry tremendous sway in shaping races. Write a letter to the editor or submit an op-ed demanding that candidates state their positions on prosecuting pregnancy outcomes.

If your local outlet doesn’t want to publish something from you, pressure them to ask about pregnancy criminalization themselves in interviews or during debates. Press them to cover a candidate’s records of doling out criminal charges related to pregnancy, and to ask candidates how they would handle (or preferably, not handle) pregnancy outcomes. Here are just a few sample questions:

• Are there circumstances when you believe someone who has miscarried or had a stillbirth should be prosecuted? If yes, what are those circumstances?

• Do you think abortion patients should be jailed?

• Is there a point in pregnancy where you believe law enforcement should be involved in a pregnancy loss?

• Women in several states have been arrested and charged over how they disposed of their pregnancy remains—do you believe there are legal and illegal ways to dispose of these remains? Can you explain?

• Will you pledge not to investigate pregnancy losses or target someone based on their pregnancy outcome?

• What are appropriate next steps if police are called over a pregnancy loss?

• Do you identify as “pro-life,” and if so, how would that shape your work in this office?

• Will you work to educate fellow law enforcement officers on appropriate ways to handle pregnancy loss cases? Will you commit to working with advocacy organizations to learn more about pregnancy loss, fetal personhood, criminalization?

You can also come up with questions of your own by reviewing Pregnancy Justice’s guidelines for law enforcement and for medical examiners.

Remember that you’re the expert in your community. Are there local political mobilization groups—like, say, Indivisible—that endorse candidates and influence voters? Ask for their help pressing candidates on pregnancy criminalization.

Reproductive Freedom on the Ballot

Reproductive freedom is on the ballot every year—not just during a presidential year, and not just when there’s an abortion rights constitutional amendment. We’re talking about up and down the ballot.

The anti-abortion movement has known this for generations and works accordingly: conservatives have reshaped nearly every aspect of American life by planting extremists in every office where decisions about our bodies and lives are made.

It’s past time we use that playbook against them, hold bad cops accountable, and protect pregnant people’s basic civil liberties. That doesn’t begin and end with abortion rights policies—who renders the enforcement is just as important.

While these races may be low on your ballot, they’re hardly insignificant: “Everyone should know whether their elected law enforcement officials, including sheriffs, prosecutors, and coroners, are using their positions to prosecute pregnancy,” Sussman says.

“It doesn’t have to be this way… Voters understand that pregnant people and their families need access to healthcare and community-based support, not criminalization.”