Punishing Pregnancy Loss: Miscarriage Criminalization as an Embodied Carceral Practice

The persecution of Brittany Watts, a 34-year-old Black Ohio woman arrested in September 2023 after experiencing a miscarriage, is emblematic of pregnancy loss criminalization as an embodied carceral practice. In the United States, the expansion of “fetal personhood” laws, coupled with a desire to punish imperfect pregnancies, have coalesced to produce policies and practices which actively police and criminalize pregnancy loss. The carceral regime of fetal personhood is further reinforced by medical paternalism and surveillance. I argue that the policies and practices which police pregnancy loss are rooted in a series of carceral logics, which are in turn reinforced by race and class hierarchies which disproportionately impact Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income women. By using Watts’ case as a focal point, this paper contributes to our understanding of how the racialized and gendered carceral logics of miscarriage criminalization emerge, operate, and intersect.