Within the next month it is very likely the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate the federal constitutional right to an abortion. When that happens, dormant trigger laws in many states will immediately go into effect and abortion will become a crime. Because abortion will be regulated at the state level, enforcement and penalties will vary greatly. Kentucky, South Dakota, North Dakota, Tennessee, South Carolina and Missouri are just some of the states that would make providing an abortion a felony, with penalties including jail time up to 20 years. Other states, too impatient to wait for the court decision, have already moved to increase penalties for either having or providing an abortion. Louisiana attempted to classify abortion as a homicide, although lawmakers there have since walked back the effort. Texas is uniquely punitive, criminalizing abortion after six weeks and incentivizing enforcement through the private sector by offering bounties of $10,000 cash to deputized ordinary citizens who can sue anyone involved in providing an abortion.
All of which raises the question of how criminal abortion laws will be enforced in this country once Roe falls. We already have some idea. Today in the United States, several women are in jail, and some have been charged with murder, for a loss of pregnancy. In a 2013 peer-reviewed study, National Advocates for Pregnant Women documented 413 cases of arrests, detentions and forced interventions on pregnant people from 1973 to 2005. As recently as April, a Texas woman was arrested and detained on murder charges for self-inducing an abortion. Those charges were eventually dropped, but these cases all raise the specter that with the removal of federal protections, enforcement will only increase.
