What Comes After Roe? Fear, Surveillance and Felony Charges

[niyad]

What Comes After Roe? Fear, Surveillance and Felony Charges
PUBLISHED 6/12/2025 by Jennifer Weiss-Wolf
Since the Dobbs decision, we have weathered three years of extreme politicization of abortion rights. The stakes for women just keep rising.



Protesters outside the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, 2024, the on second anniversary of the Dobbs ruling. (Celal Gunes / Anadolu via Getty Images)

Originally published by The Contrarian.

The news comes at such a fast, furious pace, that more and more I find myself numb to that gut-punch feeling it can (and still should) trigger.
I had not planned to write on abortion this week, but then read Monday’s New York Times feature detailing the online provision of abortion pills. The reporting on the array of concerns burdening patients who need abortion care truly sent me reeling. In particular, a Texas woman who inquired how to explain to her hometown doctor why she is no longer pregnant if she got an abortion. Her fear of exposure to law enforcement is palpable. Should she forgo medical care until it is safe to show her non-pregnant belly? If she explained the loss as a miscarriage, would medical staff know the difference?

Miscarriage is no longer a foolproof explanation anyway. Women across the country, from Alabama to Georgia to Ohio, have been charged with felonies after pregnancy loss, in numbers that continue to rise, according to the nonprofit Pregnancy Justice. Last week in West Virginia, a county prosecutor went so far as to warn those who miscarry to proactively turn themselves in, telling WVNS 59News those women should “[c]all law enforcement, or 911, and just say, ‘I miscarried. I want you to know.’” Because dialing the local precinct to report one’s reproductive status is a sure sign of a free, functional democracy. Right?



Vice President JD Vance speaks at the annual antiabortion March for Life rally on the National Mall on Jan. 24, 2025. (Kent Nishimura / Getty Images)

The stakes just keep rising. Since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, we have weathered three years of extreme politicization of abortion rights. Last week, the Trump administration reared its head again, this time rescinding guidance about hospitals’ obligation under a federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), to provide health- and life-saving abortions to patients experiencing medical crises. “EMTALA has long protected the right to emergency abortion care when it is the necessary treatment to stabilize a patient. Stripping away federal guidance affirming what the law requires will put lives at risk,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. “To be clear: this action doesn’t change hospitals’ legal obligations, but it does add to the fear, confusion, and dangerous delays patients and providers have faced since the fall of Roe.”


. . . . .
Yet here we are, with bills to codify those rights brewing in a quarter of U.S. states this year. Even when they do not succeed, we cannot simply ignore them or hope their proponents call it quits. Rather, this is a prime opportunity to double down on educating people and harnessing public opinion. Professor Kimberly Mutcherson of Rutgers Law (who has weighed in for The Contrarian on IVF policy) offers a bright-ish note to this dark moment, telling CNN, “Women have been criminalized for their pregnancies for decades, frankly, so to the extent that there is a wider and broader conversation about what it means to treat an embryo or a fetus as a person, and the ways in which that diminishes the personhood of somebody who was pregnant, that is in fact a valuable thing. … Maybe this is actually going to bring us to a better space.”

https://msmagazine.com/2025/06/12/roe-v-wade-emergency-abortion-surveillance-miscarriage-texas-republicans-ban/