Alabama Locking Up Pregnant Women Arrested for Marijuana to Protect Their Fetuses
The anti-choice movement claims that in the service of protecting and advancing this superior being of the fetus, it is justifiable, even necessary, to steal the freedom of pregnant women, a columnist for the Guardian explains.
Landwebs
A peculiar Alabama law that refuses pregnant women who are arrested for drug offenses from posting bail and going free because they are considered a danger to their fetuses is being strictly enforced in Etowah county, writes columnist Moira Donegan in an op-ed for The Guardian. The pregnant women have to stay in state custody: either in jail, or in a residential drug rehab program.
Alabama criminalizes more women for pregnancy than any other state, but the trend of imprisoning pregnant and postpartum women for supposedly endangering their fetuses is one that’s growing nationwide, says Donegan. Over just a 14-year period, from 2006 to 2020, there were more than 1,300 such cases. Etowah county has jailed 150 pregnant women in recent years; as many as 12 are currently held in its jail.
