Policing the Womb
Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood

This book tells the real-life horror story of states' abusing laws and infringing on rights to police women and their pregnancies.

Michele Goodwin (Author)

9781108747592, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 25 August 2022

337 pages, 1 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.454 kg

'Policing the Womb is an impressive, scholarly, yet very readable, study which draws on more than two hundred court cases, statutes, legal briefs, and legislative and government reports as well as an impressive list of scholarly books and articles which span medicine, health policy, law and the social sciences. It also draws on hundreds of newspaper articles, films and other media sources. While I plan to use it for an upper division medical anthropology course that I've been teaching for the last seventeen years, I think it would also be suitable for courses on health policy and law, women and gender studies, and ethics.' Ronald Loewe, Anthropology Book Forum (https://anthrobookforum.americananthro.org)

In Policing the Womb, Michele Goodwin explores how states abuse laws and infringe on rights to police women and their pregnancies. This book looks at the impact of these often arbitrary laws which can result in the punishment, incarceration, and humiliation of women, particularly poor women and women of color. Frequently based on unscientific claims of endangering a fetus, these laws allow extraordinary powers to state authorities over reproductive freedom and pregnancies. In this book, Michele Goodwin discusses real examples of women whose pregnancies have been controlled by the law and what has led to the United States being the deadliest country in the developed world for a woman to be pregnant.

1. Introduction
2. Pregnancy and state power: prosecuting fetal endangerment
3. Creeping criminalization of pregnancy across the United States
4. Abortion law
5. Changing roles of doctors and nurses: hospital snitches and police informants
6. Revisiting the fiduciary relationship
7. Creating criminals: race, stereotypes, and collateral damage
8. The pregnancy penalty: when the state gets it wrong
9. Policing beyond the border
10. Lessons for law and society: a reproductive justice New Deal or Bill of Rights
11. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Women's health [VFDW], Gender & the law [LAQG], Law & society [LAQ], Law [L], Politics & government [JP], Gender studies: women [JFSJ1]