The methods on this list are dangerous: Ergot can cause gangrene and psychosis ; tansy oil can rot internal organs; and a coat hanger can cause infection, sterility, hemorrhage, and even death. As late as , 17 percent of all pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths were due to women seeking illegal abortions, according to Planned Parenthood.
That is not to say that every form of DIY abortion is grisly and deadly. Self-induced abortions have been proven safe and effective when performed correctly. From to , a group of women in Chicago ran an underground feminist abortion " referral and counseling center. No deaths were ever reported of women who had abortions through Jane. Ross tells Allure that granny midwives in the black community also frequently performed abortions. So if a woman needed help delivering her baby, or as they used to call it, 'bringing back the menses,' a euphemism for abortion, that's what the granny midwives did, up until they got criminalized in the s and 60s.
Emily Varnam — who is a doula, educator, and co-founder of the Fifth Vital Sign — explains the practice of menstrual extraction to Allure , saying that it works by creating a vacuum to suction out the contents of the uterus through the cervix. Obviously, care is needed, and it's something that you would want to have someone who is trained to do. But the truth is, self-induced abortion is still being practiced today.
While some of us are steeling ourselves for the fact that we may need to revisit this form of birth control if Roe v. Wade is overturned , many others are already doing so. The reason that we need this information today, even while abortion is still legal, is the reality of class, race, and geographical privilege.
Those of us in more progressive states or with greater socioeconomic privilege and medical access may view DIY abortion as a scary part of the past, no longer practiced or necessary. But some simply do not have access to safe and legal abortion, and that number is likely going to grow in the Trump era. The other problem, advocates say, is that pregnancy is complicated. A woman can have a miscarriage or a premature birth for any reason, often due to factors out of her control.
And doctors can't really tell the difference between a self-induced abortion and a natural miscarriage or pre-term labor, unless there's an obvious injury. So if police start investigating self-abortion as a crime, women who have miscarriages are also subject to interrogation, arrest, and even incarceration. Women in the US have been jailed after miscarriage and charged with murder for attempting suicide while pregnant.
This isn't just a theoretical possibility, and it doesn't just happen in countries like El Salvador where abortion is outlawed.
Research from NAPW found cases of US women whose pregnancies caused their arrest, detainment, or forced medical intervention from to — probably a drastic undercount, and not including other cases NAPW knows about since The rate of these kinds of cases seems to be going up, Paltrow said.
NAPW documents all kinds of likely human rights violations: women being arrested or jailed after a miscarriage, women being charged with murder after attempting suicide while pregnant, women being strapped down and forced to have unwanted C-sections, women being stripped of their parental rights for mild drug problems or even taking a single Valium pill while pregnant. That is, if prosecutors are really determined to punish a pregnant woman for doing something they dislike, they can find a way.
If a murder or fetal homicide charge won't stick, there are always charges like practicing medicine without a license or improperly disposing of fetal remains. If making poor choices during pregnancy is child abuse, poverty and bad nutrition can become criminal acts. Drug laws are a particularly common tool prosecutors use to throw pregnant women in jail. Pregnant women who use drugs are charged with chemical endangerment, child abuse, even assault — even though we now know that illicit drug use doesn't do the kind of long-term harm to a child that people think it does.
Drug use on its own is also hard to separate from other factors that we know impact fetal health like poverty, poor nutrition, and lack of prenatal care. If a drug-addicted woman happens to have a premature birth or a child with health problems, you can't really prove it was caused by the drug use. And prosecuting pregnant women for drug use is likely to discourage them from seeking the medical care or addiction help they need to have a healthy pregnancy.
Poor pregnancy outcomes can happen for any number of reasons. If the courts equate poor choices during pregnancy with child abuse, then poverty and bad nutrition can become criminal acts. Realistically speaking, nobody's going to throw a wealthy white woman in jail for eating sushi during her pregnancy if she happens to have a miscarriage afterward.
They could try, of course. But NAPW found that black women and economically disadvantaged women are more likely to be arrested and charged for pregnancy-related issues. Prosecutors are more likely to succeed if the woman they're charging is marginalized and has fewer resources to fight back, or if she has done something stigmatized like using drugs or attempting self-harm.
Like many states, Tennessee does restrict abortion after a fetus is viable, which is usually around 24 to 26 weeks but varies with every pregnancy.
Depending on her medical circumstances, Yocca probably couldn't have gotten a legal abortion in Tennessee at 24 weeks, when she allegedly tried to self-induce. Of course, attempted first-degree murder is something else entirely. Prosecutors probably brought this charge in the first place because they thought Yocca's actions were horrific and deserved to be harshly punished.
They saw a child who will be disabled for the rest of his life because of his mother's actions, and they saw those actions as the definition of attempted murder. Except that's not what Tennessee law says — which is why the attempted murder charge was later dismissed. Like 37 other states , Tennessee has a "fetal homicide" law. It basically defines an embryo or fetus as a person in order to beef up penalties for crimes against a pregnant woman.
But a pregnant woman can't be prosecuted under these laws for actions against her own fetus, because abortion is legal. Fetal homicide laws are supposed to protect pregnant women, not prosecute them. But pro-choice advocates warn that when laws like Tennessee's define a fetus as a person, prosecutors can and will use the law against pregnant women. This can even happen if the law has an explicit exception for pregnant women.
That's already happened to many women in Texas who have taken drugs while pregnant, as Andrea Grimes reported for Rewire. In Indiana, where Vice President-elect Mike Pence served as governor, a woman was originally sentenced to years in prison for feticide after attempting to induce her own abortion with drugs purchased online.
Write to Samantha Cooney at samantha. Rutherford County Sherriff's Office. By Samantha Cooney. Related Stories. America Needs to Get Back to Facts. Already a print subscriber?
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