During the 2025-2026 legislative session, Pregnancy Justice analyzed over 730 bills from across the United States to identify trends that have the potential to undermine the personhood or increase the criminalization of pregnant people; as well as bills intended to protect the safety, dignity, and privacy of pregnant people. While this legislative session included an alarming number of bills that seek to advance a “prenatal personhood” agenda,1 there were also positive trends identified that center and affirm the needs of pregnant people who have substance use disorder, who are incarcerated, and who have experienced adverse pregnancy outcomes.
This recap is intended to provide a high-level overview of legislative trends and highlight specific bills of interest related to Pregnancy Justice’s core focus of challenging prenatal personhood and the ways it undermines pregnant people’s rights through criminalization and family policing.3.4 This includes threats to IVF care, the criminalization of pregnancy loss and abortion, the criminalization of substance use and pregnancy, and pregnancy and incarceration.
Noteworthy Trends: Dangerous and Harmful
- Though there were fewer bills that would make abortion homicide introduced this session, and anti-abortion legislators remain divided on whether pregnant people should be criminalized, the so called “abortion abolitionist” movement is gaining momentum.
- Anti-abortion legislators are strategic and coordinated in their effort to socialize prenatal personhood ideas: deliberately introducing extreme bills, and when those stall, introducing incrementally less extreme versions until one finds traction.
- Anti-abortion legislators are masking their harmful legislation in new and “creative” ways (e.g., within AI regulation, environmental protections, expanding child support and tax credits, assistive reproductive technology (ART) reporting requirements).
Forward Moving and Helpful
- There were several bills that would repeal laws that give rights to the “unborn” or protect people from criminalization following pregnancy loss.
- One state introduced a bill to ban a specific forensic test used only in infant/fetal loss criminalization cases that has long faced scrutiny for its lack of accuracy.
- Sustained pressure from reproductive justice advocates and the public successfully stalled and shut down harmful bills, even in Republican trifecta states.
- There is growing bipartisan recognition that substance use during pregnancy is a maternal and mental health issue and should be treated as such, though stigma remains an impediment to public health responses.
- While they don’t move us toward the ultimate goal of ending incarceration, there were meaningful bipartisan efforts to improve conditions for pregnant and postpartum people who are currently incarcerated.
In this detailed 30 page document, of particular concern were various “catch kit” and “clean water” bills introduced in Pennsylvania (HB1844), Wisconsin (HB718/SB734), South Carolina (HB4655/HB5095), and at the federal level (HR7983), which would require people experiencing a miscarriage or abortion to collect their own pregnancy tissue and bring it to a doctor’s office as medical waste. Beyond the pure indignity and absurdity of that requirement, the Wisconsin bill would also effectively ban telehealth prescriptions by forcing healthcare providers to conduct an in person examination, remain physically present when the medication is taken, and schedule an in-person follow up within seven days. Over the years, a number of states have introduced similar bills, including Texas, Wisconsin, Montana, Maine, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Wyoming, though none have yet been enacted.
SOURCE: Pregnancy Justice US 2025-2026. https://www.pregnancyjusticeus/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2025-2026-Legislative-Recap.pdf