Some reports following New York’s passage of the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) asserted that the RHA somehow increases the risk of gender violence. Pregnancy Justice and Professor Julie Goldscheid (CUNY Law School) authored a statement challenging those claims, and other false claims linking laws criminalizing abortion and related feticide laws with protection of women from violence.

Pregnancy Justice Senior Staff Attorney Amber Khan authored "The Crime Was Pregnancy," published in the Summer 2019 issue of Ms. Magazine. This important piece provides an update to Janet Gallagher's Ms. Magazine article "The Fetus and the Law -- Whose Life Is It Anyway," published over 35 years ago.

Pregnancy Justice and If/When/How wrote and organized a letter sent to the FDA, signed by organizations and experts in reproductive health and rights, public health, harm reduction, and HIV/AIDS. The letter opposes the recent warning letters targeting mifepristone and misoprostol as dangerous, and urges the FDA to remove the REMS for mife.

Anti-abortion measures infringe on the constitutional rights and the personhood of all women. Anti-abortion ideology is used to justify forced medical interventions on pregnant women and arrests and detentions of pregnant women who have experienced pregnancy losses, disagreed with doctor’s advice, or had or attempted to have an abortion.

The New York Times Series " A Woman's Rights"
March 11, 2019
The New York Times Editorial Board published the groundbreaking series "A Woman's Rights" on December 28, 2018. Please find the entire series here.

You can read each part of the series and download individual PDFs below:

Download Intro: A Woman's Rights

Download Part 1: When Prosecutors Jail a Mother for a Miscarriage

Download Part 2: The Feticide Playbook, Explained

Download Part 3: The Cost of Complacency About Roe

Download Part 4: Slandering the Unborn

Download Part 5: The Mothers Society Condemns

Download Part 6: Can a Corpse Give Birth?

Download Part 7: How My Stillbirth Became a Crime

Download Part 8: The Future of Personhood Nation

February 21, 2019

Broadening the Conversation About and Celebration of New York’s Reproductive Health Act (RHA)• The RHA protects and values all women – including those who support abortion rights, those who profoundly oppose them, and everyone in between.

Indiana v. Purvi Patel

Despite extensive public outcry, including petitions to the prosecutor, Purvi Patel was charged with feticide and ͞negligent treatment of a child͟ in Indiana in 2013-14 for allegedly seeking to terminate her pregnancy at home with medication.

Abortion Restrictions and Women’s Liberty: Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt ( Pregnancy Justice and the NYU Law School Reproductive Justice Clinic organized and filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of 14 organizations in this pivotal case challenging Texas laws that would have undermined the right to choose abortion and severely restricted women’s access to abortion services in that state.

Tennessee v. Anna Yocca

Anna Yocca was accused of attempting to terminate her pregnancy at home with a coat hanger. She presented at an emergency department and was admitted to the hospital. Some days later she consented to having cesarean surgery and gave birth to a premature baby.

Georgia v. Kenlissia Jones

In 2015, Kenlissia Jones was arrested and held without bond in Georgia on the charge of "malice murder" for allegedly using the drug misoprostol to have an abortion at home, outside of a medical setting. After Pregnancy Justice and local allies spoke out again st the arrest, the County prosecutor concluded that there existed no legal grounds in Georgia for charging a pregnant woman with murder for terminating her own pregnancy (and issued a press release to that effect). While the murder charge against Ms. Jones was dropped and she was released from jail, this occurred only after she had endured the trauma of an arrest, incarceration for several days, and violation of her rights to medical and personal privacy.