.wp-post-image {display: none;}

National Advocates for Pregnant Women

Download as a PDF file

The coronavirus pandemic, and our country’s lack of preparedness for it, give us an opportunity to make important observations and learn (or relearn) key lessons.

In an 8-part series, the New York Times Editorial Board squarely addresses the core issues, intersectional frameworks, and cases NAPW has been working on for more than 17 years. It recognizes NAPW's leadership in defending the rights of pregnant women.

The war on drugs involves criminal laws that prohibit possession and distribution of certain substances by certain groups of people. It also responds to a public health issues (drug dependency) through the criminal law system. Laws that prohibit common human activities - such as drinking alcohol, using drugs, and having abortions have all failed to stop those activities.

Alicia Beltran, a 28-year-old pregnant woman, sought early prenatal care and confided in health care workers about prior use of painkillers and her efforts to end that use on her own. Instead of commending Ms. Beltran for her progress, her medical practitioners reported her to the Department of Human Services, as a result of which she was arrested on July 18, 2013 by Wisconsin law enforcement officials.

Dear Friends and Allies,

As many of you know, on June 26, a grand jury in Alabama indicted Marshae Jones for the crime of manslaughter because she experienced a pregnancy loss that she allegedly caused by being unable to protect herself from being shot in the stomach while 5 months pregnant.

Some reports following New York’s passage of the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) asserted that the RHA somehow increases the risk of gender violence. NAPW 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.

NAPW 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.

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.