For decades, pregnant people across America have been subjected to criminalization and deprivations of liberty on the basis of pregnancy or pregnancy outcomes. Women have been targeted by police and prosecutors, healthcare providers, child welfare workers, and judges who have sought to deprive them of their constitutional rights in the name of "fetal personhood.
With Roe in the Balance, NAPW Launches Multidisciplinary Confronting Pregnancy Criminalization Guide for Medical, Legal, Child Welfare, and Policy Professionals
June 23, 2022
As we await the anticipated fall of Roe and the subsequent loss of the constitutionally protected right to abortion, National Advocates for Pregnant Women today launched a first-of-its-kind, multidisciplinary guide to arm professionals with the tools and resources to reject the criminalization of pregnant people and their pregnancy outcomes — Confronting Pregnancy Criminalization: A Practical Guide for Healthcare Providers, Lawyers, Medical Examiners, Child Welfare Workers, and Policymakers.
NAPW Releases Groundbreaking Report — “Harming Fathers: How the Family Court System Forces Men to Regulate Pregnancy” ; Reproductive Justice Is For Men, Too
National Advocates for Pregnant Women today released the groundbreaking report Harming Fathers: How the Family Court System Forces Men to Regulate Pregnancy , which analyzes and documents dozens of cases from around the country in which men have been labeled as abusive or neglectful — even losing access to their children — for failing to control the behavior of the women during their pregnancies.
Harming Fathers: How the Family Court System Forces Men to Regulate Pregnancy
NAPW's groundbreaking report Harming Fathers: How the Family Court System Forces Men to Regulate Pregnancy analyzes and documents dozens of cases across the country in which men have been labeled as abusive or neglectful — even losing access to their children — for failing to control the behavior of women during their pregnancies.
Issue Brief: Parenting and Drug Use
People parent. People use drugs. People parent and use drugs. Despite how common this is, parenting and drug use is highly stigmatized, rarely talked about, and punishable by the state within both the criminal and family legal systems. But, we know that not all parents are faced with family separation and criminalization.
Testimony in Support of Louisiana HB 1027: Preventing Criminal Liability Based on Pregnancy Outcomes
Note: this bill failed in committee. A Louisiana abortion ban containing language that would have allowed pregnant women to be charged with homicide in relation to their own pregnancy outcomes, including abortion, is expected to be amended to remove such language after opposition from House Republicans and the state's governor.
Fact Sheet: Wisconsin’s “Unborn Child Protection Act” (Act 292)
This fact sheet provides background information about Wisconsin’s Act 292, colloquially known as the “Unborn Child Protection Act” or the “Cocaine Mom Law.” We call it Act 292 because the Act harms both children and fetuses—it does not protect them—and the previously-used term “cocaine mom” elicits a false, slanderous, and racist trope about people who consumed cocaine during pregnancy, which we reject.
Webinar: “From Complicity to Resistance: Demanding an Abolitionist and Ethical Model of Social Work in Reproductive Justice”
Watch the webinar recording on our YouTube channel.
NAPW, JMacForFamilies, Drug Policy Alliance, The Bronx Defenders, and The University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work convened to discuss the role social workers play in the oppression, criminalization, and surveillance of pregnant and postpartum people within the criminal and family policing (commonly known as child welfare) systems.
Case Update: Arizona Mother Placed on Child Neglect Registry for Using Legal Medical Marijuana Wins on Appeal
Last week, the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed the Arizona Department of Child Safety’s decision to place Lindsay R. on its child abuse and neglect Central Registry for 25 years for using legally prescribed marijuana to treat her hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), a condition that causes severe nausea and vomiting and can endanger the life of the pregnant woman and her pregnancy.
Testimony of National Advocates for Pregnant Women to the Senate Judiciary Committee of the Ohio Senate in Opposition to SB.216
On behalf of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), we respectfully submit this written testimony in opposition to Senate Bill 216. We are a non-partisan legal advocacy organization dedicated to the welfare of pregnant people and their families. Our testimony draws on over 20 years of work on cases in which state actors intervened in a pregnant woman’s medical decision-making or punished a pregnant or postpartum woman and her family on the basis of something she may have or may not have done while pregnant.