Woman Investigated for Pregnancy Loss..in New York

10.10.24

Click to skip ahead: In Criminalizing Pregnancy, a New York woman is being investigated for her pregnancy loss. In the States, news from Arizona, Georgia, Indiana and Texas. Ballot Measure Updates from Florida. In the Nation, some quick hits. In 2024 news, Donald Trump is trying to reach ‘terminally online’ young men by going on podcasts. And in You Love to See It, my appearance on the Daily Show pissed off a conservative media outlet.

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Criminalizing Pregnancy

Usually when I cover news of women being criminalized for miscarriages or stillbirths, the story is coming from a state like Alabama or Georgia. But pro-choice laws don’t always protect people from being targeted for their pregnancy outcomes, and today’s news is a perfect example of that.

Here in my home state of New York, a 20 year-old woman is under investigation for losing her pregnancy in a restaurant bathroom.

It’s following all of the hallmarks we’ve seen in other, similar cases: Local media is covering a woman’s pregnancy loss as a crime story and calling the fetus a ‘baby’ in sensationalized headlines; and police are considering using a law seemingly unrelated to abortion. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told a local outlet that they’re working with the district attorney to determine if she’ll be arrested and charged. “Most likely it would lead to the arrest of concealment of a human corpse, which is a [class] E felony,” he said. (Please know this not actually a crime, despite police statements: Repro rights attorneys tell me that New York doesn’t classify a fetus as ‘human remains’ until later in pregnancy.)

But again, this is typical: You may remember that when Brittany Watts in Ohio was arrested after miscarrying, she was charged with ‘abuse of a corpse.’ And—as groups like If/When/How have noted—prosecutors may also bring charges like ‘chemical endangerment’ or ‘practicing medicine without a license.’

I’ll keep you updated on the story if charges are brought, but as I’ve said so many times before, this is obscene even if this young woman isn’t arrested. Imagine going through a traumatic pregnancy loss in a public place and instead of getting help, you’re questioned by the police.

This is part of the reason New Yorkers should be spreading the word about Prop 1, the equal rights amendment on the ballot in November: It protects abortion rights and prevents discrimination based on pregnancy or pregnancy outcomes.

In the States

One of the primary reasons pregnancy criminalization happens is thanks to fetal personhood; we know that when fetuses are treated as legal human beings, the people carrying them are often not. Take what happened this week in Georgia, where a football player was arrested for assault and battery on a fetus. That’s right: After Colbie Young allegedly abused his ex-girlfriend, he wasn’t arrested for hurting her—only her pregnancy.

These are the kinds of cases we can expect to see more and more of as fetal personhood continues to take hold in the states across the country. And as I pointed out on TikTok yesterday, it’s a good reminder that conservatives attack on abortion rights was never just about rolling back reproductive rights—but erasing women’s humanity.

Speaking of the consequences of abortion bans, let’s talk about what’s happening in Arizona, where a new study finds that the 15-week abortion ban is costing the state billions every year. In fact, the report from the non-partisan Grand Canyon Institute estimates that because of the way the ban pushes Arizona women out of the labor market and disincentives workers moving to the state, the ban could cost the state as much as $3.4 billion every year.

Researchers say that thanks in addition to decreased participation in the workforce among women, Arizona’s ban is also impacting healthcare more broadly, education, and business in the state. Applications for medical residencies in the state have already dropped by over 18%, for example, and everyone from college students to employees are looking to live in states with access to reproductive healthcare. The authors write, “Arizona is losing out in efforts to attract talent to the state.”

We knew this would happen; feminists have long warned that banning abortion isn’t just bad for women and democracy, but the economy. I just wonder how long it will take Republicans to catch on (or care).

A reminder: Arizona voters will have a chance to restore abortion rights this November via a ballot measure.

Meanwhile, abortion rights is taking center stage in Indiana’s gubernatorial race, with Democratic nominee Jennifer McCormick releasing a detailed plan on how she would use the office to restore and protect abortion rights. Remember, Indiana has effectively a total abortion ban, with ‘exceptions’ that are near-impossible to use. Just last month, for example, a court declined to broaden the ban’s health exception, even though doctors have made clear the law is putting patients’ lives at risk. The rape exception, which supposedly allows for care in the first ten weeks of pregnancy, is similarly problematic: Abortions in can only be performed in hospitals, and hospitals pretty much refuse to offer care.

It’s also worth remembering that Indiana has been at the center of the fight for abortion privacy: Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita has been trying to make women’s abortion reports public records in the same way birth and death certificates are.

Given all that, McCormick has laid out what she calls a “common sense abortion rights” plan. And it’s a good one: In addition to protecting the privacy of medical records (including the individual abortion reports that Rokita are targeting), McCormick’s plan calls for appointing abortion rights supporters to state boards and commissions like the Indiana Medical Licensing Board, prioritizing funding for reproductive health (as opposed to crisis pregnancy centers), and shifting the focus “from enforcement to compliance assistance for clients and providers.” In other words, helping providers deal with the bullshit law rather than using the bullshit law to punish them.

McCormick also said that she would lobby for citizen-led ballot initiatives so that Hoosiers could repeal the ban altogether. (Right now, only the Indiana legislature can initiate a constitutional amendment.)

It’s clear that McCormick understands how vital the restoration of abortion rights are, and in a moment when the race is closer than expected, it’s a good time to spread the word to your friends in the state.

Finally, reproductive rights and justice group the Afiya Center says that the Supreme Court’s decision not to take up the fight over emergency abortions in Texas will hurt Black women in the state. As you know, SCOTUS declined to take up the Biden administration’s appeal of the Fifth Circuit decision that said Texas doesn’t have to adhere to EMTALA and that EMTALA doesn’t require emergency abortions.

In other words, the Court allowed Texas to continue to deny women abortions in hospital emergency rooms, even when their health and life is at risk.

In a statement, the Afiya Center said, “Black women will suffer unnecessary injuries, risk criminal prosecution, and worst of all preventable deaths due to this ruling.” Deputy director D’Andra Willis also pointed out the higher maternal mortality rate for Black women, and how that will impact care for those with dangerous pregnancies. “Now you have doctors who don't feel safe, doctors who believe, and I want to say have been criminalized for just doing the very thing that they took the oath for,” she said.

Quick hits:

• Axios, The Guardian, and ABC News have more on the reinstatement of the Georgia abortion ban;

• Where Pennsylvania’s candidates for Attorney General stand on abortion rights;

• And Texas Monthly on the Texas doctor working to expand abortion access in Ohio.

Ballot Measure Updates

Let’s talk about what’s happening in Florida, where Republicans—led by Gov. Ron DeSantis—have been pulling out every dirty trick imaginable to stop voters from having a say on abortion rights. In addition to opening up a bullshit voter fraud investigation into Amendment 4, complete with sending cops to voters’ homes, DeSantis’ administration is using taxpayer funding to run ads opposing the pro-choice ballot measure and threatening television stations that run Amendment 4 ads with criminal charges.

It appears that the full-scale Republican assault on the pro-choice ballot measure may be working: polling from the New York Times/Sienna College shows that 46% of voters say they’ll support Amendment 4, which is far short of the 60% needed. But don’t lose hope yet; other polling has looked very good for the ballot initiative, and as the Times point out, the language they used to poll voters this time around is different. (Past polls with higher support used the exact language that voters will see.)

Regardless of the polling for Amendment 4, we know that voters in Florida—including the majority of Republicans—oppose the state’s abortion ban. People want abortion rights restored, and everything that Republicans are doing in the state is about suppressing those votes.

Quick hits:

• In the Baltimore Sun, Maryland resident and former NARAL Pro-Choice America board chair Rosalyn Jonas writes in support of Ballot Question 1;

• And The 19th writes that the Arizona ballot measure could shift the narrative on Latinas and abortion.

Listen Up

I’ve been having some incredible conversations about abortion lately, with two of my favorites coming out today! First up, I spoke to Katie Couric and Cindi Leive on Next Question, where we got into media coverage, conservative language tricks and more:

I also had an incredible conversation Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle at We Can Do Hard Things about everything from attacks on birth control and shame, to connection abortion rights has to democracy.

In the Nation

• Mother Jones reports on the abortion rights activists with chronic illnesses and disabilities;

• Forbes has a state-by-state rundown of abortion laws;

• POLITICO on Men4Choice;

• PopSugar on why it’s so hard to get birth control on college campuses;

• And I love that publications like SELF are covering how Project 2025 would impact readers’ reproductive health.

“When we get into conversations about why and under what circumstances [abortions happen], we are undercutting why we should trust women. When we’re asking why they needed access to abortion, then we’re implicitly saying…‘I need a little bit more information before I don’t pass judgment on you.’”

-Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood in The New Republic

2024

Apparently Donald Trump was jealous of Vice President Kamala Harris’ Call Her Daddy appearance and wanted to make a podcast visit of his own. The disgraced former president went on comedian Andrew Schulz’s podcast this week, where he—as The New Yorker put it—attempted to “communicate directly to a young, terminally online, male audience.”

The result, however, was less than stellar for Trump, who rambled so badly that the hosts laughed at him. It was his rant on abortion rights and the end of Roe, though, that had me ready to throw punches. It wasn’t just what he said and the lies he told—we’re used to that already. It was that to Trump and Schulz, our rights were a joke. Here’s the question Schulz waded into abortion rights with:

“Baron is 18, he's handsome he's tall, he's rich…he’s unleashed in New York City are you sure you want to reverse Roe vs. Wade now? I mean maybe give him a few years you know?”

Har har—women are dying of sepsis and cancer patients are being denied treatment in their home states but maybe we want to make sure abortion is legal in case Baron knocks someone up.

Trump, of course, responded by going on his usual nonsense about how no one liked Roe and he delivered something that made everyone happy. (As Harris has said—what we’re seeing right now, no one wanted this.) But it was his bizarre rant about rape that made my stomach churn. First, there was this:

“If your daughter's raped by somebody, let's say he's from a prison someplace and he's killed people and everything else, absolutely, absolutely you have to be able to [have abortion].”

Then, several questions later, he repeated the violent imagery:

“You have a daughter and she's raped by the worst most violent criminal in the country and you cannot get you know her. You cannot take her…She got to live with this, and you know, the father is a monster he's from an insane asylum because he killed 50 people and you're going to have that baby?”

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that Trump himself has been found liable of rape—and how noxious it is that he would speak about sexual assault at all—I have to point out that fantasizing about young women being raped is actually par for the course when it comes to Republicans talking about abortion.

If you’ve read my other books, you might remember this: Back in 2006, former South Dakota Sen. Bill Napoli explained under what circumstances he believed an abortion should be allowable:

“A rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated.” 

As I wrote at the time: you can practically see his boner. (I’m sorry, but it’s true.) What is it about the image of brutalized young women that Republican men are so interested in?

You Love to See It

I was on the Daily Show last night! I had a great time chatting with Jordan Klepper about abortion, and finding out that Abortion made the bestseller list on my way over certainly helped. :)

Conservative media outlet Newsbusters wasn’t too happy about my appearance, though—they took offense that I said anti-abortion leaders were the biggest asshole you knew in high school. I’ll stand by that forever.

You can watch the full interview below: