Understanding Pregnancy Criminalization
Reproductive Justice, Mixed Methods, Criminal Legal System
Across the country, people have been criminally prosecuted based on allegations related to their pregnancies, pregnancy outcomes, or pregnancy related healthcare. In collaboration with Pregnancy Justice and the University of South Carolina, researchers at the AJRC are leading a national study to better understand these prosecutions and their effects on people’s lives.
The research team identifies and analyzes these cases while conducting qualitative research with people who have experienced them. Together, these data provide new insight into national and state-level trends in pregnancy related prosecutions from 2022 to 2025 and the lived experience of pregnancy criminalization.
The team’s preliminary report, released in September 2024, analyzes the cases of 210 pregnant people who faced pregnancy-related prosecutions from June 24, 2022 to June 23, 2023. An interim update includes cases documented from June 2023 to June 2024. The research is ongoing and will result in additional reports in the coming years. The team also published an article in the N.Y.U Review of Law & Social Change in May 2026 which explores the suspected rise in pregnancy loss prosecutions since the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision.