Police responded to a call that a pregnant woman was overdosing. When they arrived, they administered Narcan, the life-saving drug that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. Afterward, they charged the woman with "abuse" of her “unborn child,” according to documents obtained by Pregnancy Justice.
This is one of 210 examples of pregnancy criminalization the nonprofit organization has documented in a report released last week that tracks police investigation and criminal court files involving pregnant people in the year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision. A previous report from the nonprofit organization showed that more and more pregnant people were being charged in the decades leading up to Dobbs. The year since saw the highest number of prosecutions the research team has documented in a single year, report co-author Wendy Bach told Salon.
