Stop Turning Women’s Bodies Into Crime Scenes

12.3.25

CLICK TO SKIP AHEAD: ABORTION RIGHTS LEADERSHIP FTW highlights a new Wisconsin bill that would decriminalize pregnancy loss. IN THE STATES, news from Arizona, Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, and more. CARE CRISIS has some sad but not unexpected news about Adriana Smith’s baby, Chance. IN THE NATION, House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to prevent active duty service members from getting IVF coverage. ANTI-ABORTION STRATEGY flags that extremists are targeting abortion storytellers. CRIMINALIZING CARE on a new bill that would repeal Washington DC’s shield law.

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ABORTION RIGHTS LEADERSHIP FTW

Want to know what abortion rights leadership looks like? Check out Wisconsin Sen. Kelda Roys, who is introducing legislation to protect women from pregnancy-related prosecutions.

To our knowledge, the Pregnancy Loss Protection Act is the first-ever pregnancy decriminalization bill.¹ It would bar law enforcement from investigating or prosecuting abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, or any pregnancy outcome that doesn’t result in a live birth. It would also ensure women can’t be held civilly liable or discriminated against because of how a pregnancy ends.

Roys—who is running for governor—told Abortion, Every Day that she’s bringing the bill to stop our bodies from being “turned into crime scenes.” When you’re having the worst day of your life, she said, police shouldn’t be “figuring out a way to arrest you instead of taking you to a hospital.”

Since the end of Roe, hundreds of women have been arrested over their pregnancy outcomes—like Brittany Watts in Ohio, charged with ‘abuse of a corpse’ for flushing her miscarriage. Or the young Georgia woman charged with ‘concealing a death’ after placing her fetal remains in the trash. A woman in Texas was jailed for five months after miscarrying in a public restroom; and in South Carolina, cops arrested a woman they claimed threw her “newborn” in a dumpster. The truth? She miscarried.

It’s clear that Roys has been paying attention to these arrests and how, exactly, they happen: some of the most common pregnancy-related charges are crimes like ‘abuse of a corpse’ or ‘abandoning a dead body’—so the Pregnancy Loss Protection Act explicitly states that a “‘corpse’ does not include fetal tissue.” That one definition can have enormous impact.

The timing for the bill also couldn’t be better. Because while Republicans insist they have no interest in prosecuting or punishing women, their legislative trends tell a very different story:

Three Years After Dobbs, They’re Coming for Patients

Just weeks ago, Wisconsin Republicans introduced a bill that would force miscarriage and abortion patients to use ‘catch kits’ to bag their pregnancy tissue and turn it in as medical waste. Roys has been one of the Democrats taking the GOP to the mat over the proposal—calling it out for exactly what it is: grotesque.

That’s how you lead on abortion: with proactive legislation that reflects what’s actually happening on the ground, and by keeping Republicans on their fucking heels. As I wrote back in June: decriminalization bills are a win-win. Even if they don’t pass, they force Republicans to admit on the record that they want the option to arrest women for miscarriages and stillbirths.

So thank you, Sen. Roys.

WHILE YOU’RE HERE: AED is collecting pregnancy loss stories for a future campaign. Click here to share yours (you can submit anonymously.)

IN THE STATES

Remember the Arizona lawmaker who thought women could be bribed into childbirth with a measly $4,000 tax credit? Well, Republican Rep. Nick Kupper is back—this time with the “Investing in Life Act,” a bill that would offer tax breaks to Arizonans who adopt frozen embryos. (I’m so tired.)

Arizona’s tax code already gives tax breaks to adoptive parents, but Kupper’s HB 2011 would rewrite the language to include “human embryo adoptions”—a way to encourage people to claim leftover IVF embryos as dependents.

“Why discard these fetuses, or let’s at least discard fewer of them,” Kupper said. He also claims the legislation is no different from bipartisan measures like subsidized childcare. Except, of course, that subsidized childcare doesn’t codify fetal personhood into the state tax code. This bill would.

Meanwhile, Michigan Republicans are pushing a bill that would force doctors to ask abortion patients invasive questions—and then report their answers to the state. The good news is that there’s little chance the legislation goes anywhere. Still, we like to dig into bills like this because they give us a sense of how anti-abortion activists and lawmakers are thinking, and what kinds of attacks they’re lining up next.

After all, Abortion, Every Day has been warning about the rise in ‘abortion reporting’ legislation for just about two years—from Indiana Republicans who want to make abortion reports public records like birth and death certificates, to Ohio Republicans pushing for a publicly-available online dashboard of the state’s abortion data. Some anti-abortion activists are even pushing for a national abortion reporting law.

Anti-abortion legislators are hoping to 1) scare women out of getting care by making it clear the state is tracking their abortions, and 2) set a shitty precedent for what kinds of questions are deemed reasonable to ask patients. The Michigan legislation, for example, would require doctors to ask women why they’re ending their pregnancies.

That they’re being asked anything at all is outrageous—states don’t collect data on appendectomy patients—or anyone else. So why abortion?

And don’t forget: Michigan voters passed a constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion. So this is just the GOP trying to create an end-run around the state’s constitution.

We’ve seen Republicans try to override the will of voters in just about every state that’s passed abortion protections. Like in Ohio—where Republicans are still fighting to preserve waiting periods and pushing legislation that could ban telehealth abortion pills. Now, the state’s health board appears to be slow-rolling clinic licenses. The ACLU of Ohio and the Reproductive Rights Law Initiative are suing to find out why it took the Ohio Department of Health seven months to approve one clinic’s application to provide procedural abortions—an inexplicable delay that looks a lot like intentional obstruction.

We have some semi-good news over in Missouri: after a months-long fight over ballot measure language, an appeals court has made it just a little bit harder for Republicans to trick voters into supporting an abortion ban.

A refresher: Missouri voters passed Amendment 3 last year, which protects abortion rights until ‘viability’. Republicans are furious, so they decided to put an abortion ban on the 2026 ballot—a move to repeal Amendment 3 and outlaw nearly any abortions. Because they know how unpopular abortion bans are, GOP leaders crafted their ballot summary to sound as pro-choice as possible—hoping to trick voters into supporting a near-total ban. They even named the measure Amendment 3.

Republicans’ original ballot summary, for example, said the proposed amendment would “guarantee women’s medical care for emergencies, ectopic pregnancies, and miscarriage” and “ensure women’s safety during abortions.”

Given how obviously-biased the language is, abortion rights groups have been fighting it in court. And even though a judge forced Secretary of State Denny Hoskins to rewrite the summary a few times, that misleading language remained. Until now!

Earlier today, a Missouri appeals court rewrote the summary themselves—making it clear that Republicans’ measure would repeal (the real) Amendment 3:

And no, you’re not misreading—Republicans are also attaching a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Nightmare.

In our last bit of state news, an Indiana court heard final arguments this week in a religious freedom challenge to the state’s abortion ban. Abortion is almost entirely banned in Indiana with limited ‘exceptions’. The ACLU of Indiana sued in 2022, arguing the ban violated the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act—which is sort of delightful, given Mike Pence signed it into law.

A judge issued a preliminary injunction that allowed a narrow exception for those with religious objections. Now, abortion rights advocates are asking the court to make that injunction permanent. (Again, it wouldn’t block the ban for everyone—just that narrow group of people who have sincere religious beliefs that they need abortion.)

A decision isn’t expected for a few months, but I’ll keep you updated as we learn more.

Quick hits:

• Montana Public Radio has a segment on the history of abortion rights in Montana;

• The anti-abortion extremist who shot someone outside a South Carolina Planned Parenthood is being allowed to stay on a popular fundraising platform;

• Spokane Public Radio has the latest fundraising numbers for the pro-choice ballot initiative in Idaho.

• And The Guardian just published a podcast episode on the latest Texas ban to go into effect.

CARE CRISIS

I know we all remember Adriana Smith, the Georgia woman whose body was forcibly kept alive after being declared brain-dead because she was pregnant. Her family provided an update this week through their GoFundMe, telling supporters that Smith’s son, Chance, is still in the NICU and likely will be for some time. He’s already been there for six months.

Adriana’s mother, April Newkirk, explained that Chance “will not be coming home soon” and that he’s being moved to a different hospital. “I’m very down,” she wrote.

Smith’s story sparked national outrage earlier this year, drawing attention to the state’s nightmare abortion ban. “This decision should’ve been left to us,” Newkirk said at the time. “Now we’re left wondering what kind of life he’ll have—and we’re going to be the ones raising him.”

How many times do we have to say it? The cruelty is the point.

IN THE NATION

It shouldn’t be surprising, but it’s still enraging: MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) reports that House Speaker Mike Johnson is working behind the scenes to block IVF coverage for active-duty service members.

Right now, TRICARE—the insurance plan for service members—only covers IVF when infertility is caused by a “serious or severe illness or injury while on active duty.” But a new provision in the National Defense Authorization Act would change that, requiring IVF coverage for all service members.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a veteran and mom through IVF, told MS NOW that Johnson is quietly lobbying to strip the provision. And his office offered a denial so weak it basically confirms the story:

“The Speaker has clearly and repeatedly stated he is supportive of access to IVF when sufficient pro-life protections are in place, and he will continue to be supportive when it is done responsibly and ethically.” (Emphasis ours.)

As we’ve reported before, conservatives are desperate to dodge backlash by claiming they don’t oppose IVF—they just want it regulated. That fear of voter ire is also why the Trump administration is rolling out the idea of restorative reproductive medicine: the idea that women don’t really need IVF, but to fix the “root causes” of their infertility.

Fertility treatments have become a real point of contention between the White House and top anti-abortion groups—some of whom openly refer to IVF as murder, or argue IVF “kills” more “babies” than abortion.

Last year, as Republicans scrambled to look less extreme, Trump campaigned on the promise to make IVF free for everyone. Instead, he rolled out a watered-down plan to reduce some IVF costs; we later found out anti-abortion groups had aggressively lobbied him to weaken his position.

Now, it seems Speaker Johnson is firmly on board with the anti-abortion movement’s anti-IVF agenda—even if it means punishing the military families Republicans claim to care about.

ANTI-ABORTION STRATEGY

One of the country’s most radical anti-abortion groups is targeting a Wisconsin woman who shared her abortion story—accusing her of “killing” her “preborn child.”

There’s no overstating how dangerous this is, and there’s no mistaking what the tactic is here: they want to terrify women out of sharing their stories.

Last month, Gracie Ladd spoke out about being forced to leave Wisconsin for care after her pregnancy was diagnosed with a fatal fetal abnormality at 20 weeks. She says, “Doing this advocacy work makes me feel that even though Connor didn’t ‘live a life,’ his spirit lives on in my activism, so I will keep speaking out.”

Ladd and other abortion storytellers relive their most painful and vulnerable moments in the hopes that it might prevent someone else from going through the same nightmare—they are heroes. They’re also the pro-choice movement’s most powerful weapon: they shine a light on the cruelty of abortion bans, remind Americans that these laws have real life consequences, and move voters as a result.

So how do conservatives respond? By terrorizing them. Live Action—again, one of the country’s most radical organizations—has blasted Ladd’s name out to their extremist followers in an ultra-graphic article, claiming she’s “advocat[ing] for more death.” This is harassment, plain and simple. And given the rise of anti-abortion violence, it’s a threat.

CRIMINALIZING CARE

Anti-abortion activists aren’t the only ones desperate to dole out punishment: U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde is introducing legislation to repeal Washington, DC’s shield law in order to “hold providers accountable for their crimes.”

“We cannot allow the Left’s woke ideology, under the guise of ‘bodily autonomy,’ to infiltrate our states through the shipping of [abortion] drugs with zero legal repercussions. Congress must use its constitutional authority over our nation’s capital to hold D.C. providers liable for undermining state laws and to protect women, children, and the unborn.”

What Clyde fails to mention, of course, is that DC’s shield law doesn’t just prohibit state agencies from participating in investigations against providers—but against patients.

Though they don’t like to say it publicly, anti-abortion activists and legislators are making increasingly explicit moves against women who end their pregnancies. (That’s why we need more bills like Sen. Roys’!)

Clyde’s legislation is supported by all the usual assholes—like Alliance Defending Freedom and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more.

1. Washington and California have repealed and amended existing laws to prevent pregnancy criminalization. But we believe Roys’ legislation is the first proactive bill prohibiting pregnancy prosecutions.