by Katie Klabusich
Truth-Out, 7 June 2017
… While few [US] states explicitly ban individuals from ending their pregnancies at home without direct supervision by state-sanctioned physicians, there are 38 states that are attempting to frame abortions performed without a licensed physician as an unlawful practice of medicine. However, under US Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, such attempts are actually unconstitutional, according to multiple legal experts… In the absence of more explicit laws criminalizing individuals for ending their pregnancies, rogue prosecutors backed by anti-choice state legislators and governors have instead twisted existing laws to criminalize the act and imprison people — most famously Bei Bei Shuai and Purvi Patel in… Indiana. And most recently, a 1950s law was used to arrest a 43-year-old Virginia resident Michelle Frances Roberts in April for “producing abortion or miscarriage” last year in the third trimester of her pregnancy. The misuse of these laws means that even in states where self-administered abortion is not banned outright, obtaining and ingesting medications or herbal remedies with the intention of ending a pregnancy can leave people open to legal consequences…
…Prosecutions have targeted marginalized people — typically people of color, immigrants and poor people — while relying on the public assumption that there’s no safe way to self-administer an abortion.
…The more self-induction is demonized, the more nervous people are about seeking follow-up care. It’s important to note that legally, no patient needs to disclose that they have ingested misoprostol or other self-induction medications (or even herbs). Because medical staff are often unclear about their reporting duties should they suspect self-induction, it can be safer to simply explain that you are pregnant and bleeding. By the time a patient seeks care, misoprostol will have been absorbed, leaving no indication that the patient is presenting with anything other than pregnancy complications, most likely a miscarriage…
Jill Adams, executive director of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, said that “in the new political reality of 2017, we could foresee an emboldened anti-choice movement that places women who end their own pregnancies in the bullseye of their target. These women have already been targeted in at least 17 known arrests for self-induced abortion. And we suspect the actual numbers of related arrests could be much higher…”
Adams continued: “Our research has uncovered 40 different types of laws that over-zealous prosecutors have used, or that prosecutors who are politically motivated to punish people may try to stretch and apply to women who end their own pregnancies and to those who help them,” said Adams. “To be clear, not every state has every one of these 40 types of laws on the books and not every District Attorney is going to be so brazen as to abuse the criminal justice system by applying them.”…
VISUAL: https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SIA-Legal-Team-Brochure.pdf