Alabama has an extremely high incarceration rate, locking up about 938 people per 100,000 residents. But even in a state with a disproportionate prison population, a small-scale drug possession arrest would not typically result in such a lengthy pretrial detention. But Banks fell victim to a peculiar Alabama law that supporters say Etowah County enforces with particular zeal: pregnant women arrested on drug offenses are not allowed to post bail and be released, like other people. They must remain in state custody: either in prison, or in a drug rehabilitation program. The rationale is that women are a danger to their fetuses: they must be imprisoned by the state and removed from their freedom to protect their pregnancy. In Banks’ case, corrections officials tried to send her to a rehab facility, but after an evaluation, the facility turned her down: Banks, they said, was just an occasional marijuana user, not an addict, and didn’t need drug treatment. Too healthy for rehab, but not trusted enough by the state to be released, she was held in prison. Meanwhile, Banks’ pregnancy was not going well. She has a family history of miscarriages and was bleeding in prison. At one point, prison officials assigned her to sleep in a bed that was already occupied by another inmate. Banks slept on the floor. She’s not the only one. Another woman, Hallie Burns, was booked into the Etowah County Jail just six days after giving birth to her son, who police say tested positive for a drug used by pregnant women with opioid addictions to help manage cravings and deprivation. When she is thrown in jail, Burns is still physically recovering from childbirth. But the prison had no facilities to drain or care for her wounds. Her boyfriend tried to get her pads and underwear to keep her from bleeding into her clothes, but Etowah County authorities wouldn’t let her have them. The risk of contamination was great – the indignity was even greater. Stories like Banks’ and Burns’—the unnecessary and disproportionate incarceration, the loss of liberty and recourse imposed on them because of their pregnancy, the cruelty justified by the authorities as “protection” for a fetus—are becoming more common. Alabama criminalizes more women for pregnancy than any other state. Just last year, Kim Blalock, a mother of six from Florence, Alabama, was charged with a felony for filling a long-term prescription from her doctor while she was pregnant. Prosecutors charged that the drug, which Blalock was taking as directed, could harm her fetus and that she should have known not to refill it. (Blalock later gave birth to a healthy baby boy.) Etowah County seems to be a hotbed for this particular kind of misogynistic cruelty But these incarcerations aren’t just an Alabama issue: the trend of imprisoning pregnant and postpartum women for allegedly endangering their fetuses is a growing trend nationwide. Over 32 years, from 1973, when Roe v Wade was decided, to 2005, the United States saw a total of 413 pregnancy prosecutions across the nation, according to Afsha Malik, a researcher at the reproductive justice group National Advocates for Pregnant Women . and the co-author of a recent report on the criminalization of pregnancy. But in a period of just 14 years, from 2006 to 2020, there were more than 1,300 such cases. This spike occurred while Roe was still in place. Now that it has fallen, the criminalization of pregnancy is likely to accelerate even further. “We know we’re going to see more examples of pregnant women being criminalized for behavior that could be [seen as] justified to the general public, such as substance use,” Malik told the Nation. “[Other] cases we have seen will accelerate, such as [for] falling down the stairs, gave birth at home, did not seek prenatal care, had HIV, had a self-induced abortion and experienced a pregnancy loss.’ However, Etowah County seems to be a hotbed for this particular kind of misogynistic cruelty. NAPW says the county has jailed 150 pregnant women in recent years. As many as 12 are currently being held in his prison. The Dobbs decision did not create this situation, but it is likely to exacerbate it. The politics being implemented in Etowah County and elsewhere reveal the twisted logic and hateful absurdities of the anti-choice worldview. The movement claims to see embryos and fetuses as persons, and in practice they speak as if these “persons” are not women’s equals, but their superiors: the fetus is seen as more important than the woman, more worthy, less tainted by that’s all. things that make a pregnant woman so attractive – her femininity, her sexuality, her tendency to have human desires and human struggles, like irritability or addiction or anger. In the service of protecting and promoting this superior being of the fetus, the anti-choice movement claims, it is justified, even necessary, to steal the freedom of these inferior women. And yet the practice of imprisoning women to “protect” their fetuses and infants makes no sense in itself. Prisons are dirty, desperate and violent places. Banks, who had a high-risk pregnancy, bled frequently during her incarceration and had no access to medical care. Burns, who was arrested just days after giving birth, was unable to care for her new son or young daughter. Nothing the anti-choice movement does can be said to protect anyone – not the imaginary “faces” imagined in an embryo or fetus, not real, live children deprived of their mothers, and certainly not pregnant and postpartum women. shamed and thrown into cages, still bleeding from childbirth. One begins to suspect that the only value the anti-choice movement really sees in fetal “faces” is the pretense that they enable misogynistic sadism.
