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University of California Press

About the Book

Decades before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, pregnant people faced arrest and prosecution for supposed crimes against the fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses they gestated. The Pregnancy Police investigates the legal arguments undergirding these prosecutions and sheds much-needed light on the networks of health-care providers, social workers, and legal personnel participating in this ongoing surveillance and punishment of pregnant people.

Drawing on detailed analyses of legislation, statements from prosecutors and law enforcement, and records from over a thousand arrest cases, Grace E. Howard traces the long history of state attempts to regulate and control people who have the capacity for pregnancy—from the early twentieth century's white supremacist eugenics to the end of Roe and the ever-increasing criminalization of abortion across the United States. 
 

About the Author

Grace Howard is Associate Professor of Justice Studies at San José State University.

From Our Blog

Fetal personhood laws have been around for years. Why are we only angry now?

By Grace Howard, author of The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting PersonhoodWhen I say that the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses are legal persons, many people may assume I’m talking about the recent opinion that stated embryos created in the cour
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Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations 
Acknowledgments 

Introduction 
1. The Peril of Protection 
2. Angels and Antimothers 
3. Bad Breeders 
4. “The Dead Babies May Be the Lucky Ones” 
5. “I Felt Like Nobody” 
6. Wielding the Velvet Hammer 
7. Conclusion 

Appendix 1: Methodology 
Appendix 2: Court Cases 

Notes 
References 
Index

Reviews

"The Pregnancy Police is a tour de force, offering an insightful analysis of the rampant criminalization of pregnancy and pregnant people. Grace Howard skillfully reveals the many ways the pregnancy police are all around us—watching, reporting, and bringing harm to people seen as less than fully human because they have uteruses. The book is a brilliant addition to the reproductive justice literature."—Monica J. Casper, author of Babylost: Racism, Survival, and the Quiet Politics of Infant Mortality, from A to Z

"More and more people are paying attention to the criminalization of pregnancy in the aftermath of the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The Pregnancy Police will be a book that people must cite when discussing the phenomenon."—Khiara M. Bridges, Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley