Policing the womb : invisible women and the criminalization of motherhood

Policing the womb Invisible women and the criminalization of motherhood

Michele Goodwin

Book - 2020

"[This book] brings to life the chilling ways in which women have become the targets of secretive state surveillance of their pregnancies. Michele Goodwin expands the reproductive health and rights debate beyond abortion to include how legislators increasingly turn to criminalizing women for miscarriages, stillbirths, and threatening the health of their pregnancies. The horrific results include women giving birth while shackled in leg irons, in solitary confinement, and even delivering in prison toilets. In some states, pregnancy has become a bargaining chip with prosecutors offering reduced sentences in exchange for women agreeing to be sterilized. The author shows how prosecutors may abuse laws and infringe women's rights in the... process, sometimes with the complicity of medical providers who disclose private patient information to law enforcement. Often the women most affected are poor and of color. This timely book brings to light how the unrestrained efforts to punish and police women's bodies have led to the United States being the deadliest country in the developed world to be pregnant"--

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Subjects
Reproductive rights > United States.
Pregnant women > Civil rights > United States.
Fetus > Legal status, laws, etc. > United States.
Maternal and infant welfare > Law and legislation > United States.
Pregnant women.
Fetus.
Published
Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
Michele Goodwin (author)
Physical Description
xiv, 323 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-317) and index.
ISBN
9781107030176
  • Pregnancy and state power : prosecuting fetal endangerment
  • Creeping criminalization of pregnancy across the United States
  • Abortion law
  • Changing roles of doctors and nurses : hospital snitches and police informants
  • Revisiting the fiduciary relationship
  • Creating criminals : race, stereotypes, and collateral damage
  • The pregnancy penalty : when the state gets it wrong
  • Policing beyond the border
  • Lessons for law and society : a reproductive justice New Deal or Bill of Rights.
Review by Choice Review

Goodwin (Univ. of California, Irvine), a legal scholar, masterfully documents the criminalization of women's reproduction, particularly that of poor women of color. This includes shocking examples of incarcerated women giving birth alone behind bars, pregnant women being charged with attempted feticide and endangerment for falling down stairs or using illicit drugs, forced caesarean sections resulting in death, and contemporary legal maneuvers to prevent women from obtaining abortions. Goodwin makes the case that laws, policies, and practices meant to "protect" fetuses are actually measures by the state to control the lives and bodies of women. Moreover, they are more likely to result in worse health outcomes for women and children. By examining attempts to regulate the behavior of pregnant women, Goodwin reveals the racism, classism, and misogyny that underlies many of these laws. Policing the Womb is a must read for students and scholars of reproductive health, law, and criminal justice, and would pair well with Dorothy Roberts's Killing the Black Body (1997), Jeanne Flavin's Our Bodies, Our Crimes (CH, Apr'09, 46-4731), and Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow (CH, Nov'10, 48-1766). Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals. --Lauren Jade Martin, Penn State University, Berks

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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