Thread by @JillFilipovic

This is our new #prolife dystopia: A woman was arrested for "chemical endangerment" for using drugs while pregnant. The problem: She wasn't pregnant. So officers released her, but told her if she gets pregnant IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS she'll be re-arrested.
reuters.com/legal/governme…

There are all kinds of legal things adults do that potentially put fetuses at risk of harm or death. Fetal personhood laws put pregnant women in a different category of person, vulnerable to prosecution for doing totally normal things. What if a woman falls skiing? Drinks coffee?

Of course law enforcement go for the most vulnerable and least sympathetic women first. No one is like, "using drugs while pregnant is great." But addiction is a disease. Many rehab centers won't take pregnant women. Locking pregnant women up puts them at greater risk.

And the underlying logic of these laws can come for any of us. If a fertilized egg is a person, what if a woman of childbearing age drinks before she know she's pregnant? Seems pretty negligent! What a pregnant woman intentionally eats lunch meat, a rare steak, an oyster?

Are these misogynist monsters going to go after a woman who miscarries after eating an oyster? I dunno, probably not? But right now they're going after a doctor for performing a perfectly legal abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim, because they're mad she talked about it.

There is a concerted effort in the anti-abortion movement to shut down the kind of horror stories we're hearing from women miscarrying and being denied adequate medical treatment. Is it beyond imagination that women who speak out may find themselves on the wrong end of the law?

Maybe I'm paranoid. But I can tell you that anti-abortion law makers, activists, & law enforcement officers have done some incredibly shocking stuff. "Overreach" doesn't begin to describe it. So I'm not confident that pregnant women who make even mildly imperfect choices are safe

Pregnancy should not put women in a more vulnerable legal category. And yet, since 1973, there have been "more than 1,300 arrests and detentions that wouldn’t have happened if the person weren’t pregnant or suspected to be," according to Pregnancy Justice. reuters.com/legal/governme…

What if a pregnant woman has cancer, lives in a state where abortion is not an option, and opts for chemotherapy? Is she at risk for prosecution? What about the doctor who treats her? This is not a hypothetical -- thousands of pregnant women are diagnosed with cancer.

This isn't the first of these cases. It won't be the last:

"in 2019, an Alabama grand jury indicted a woman who lost her unborn baby when she was shot, after declining to charge the shooter because it found she had fired in self-defense."

These cases existed before Roe was overturned. But Roe was at least a barrier to these kinds of prosecutions, if a highly imperfect one. Now, the anti-abortion movement is emboldened, and all bets are off.

I've fleshed this all out in a newsletter that will go out tomorrow AM. The women these laws put at particular risk: domestic violence victims, women with cancer, women with addiction disorders, and women who simply speak out about miscarrying.
jill.substack.com

This case is a troubling preview of what can happen when the state decides it belongs in our collective uteruses, and when a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus is given more rights than the human being they reside in.
jill.substack.com/p/welcome-to-t…