Criminalizing Motherhood and Reproductive Health with Dr. Michele Goodwin

Since the Dobbs Supreme Court case was decided, we have gained a heightened awareness of the criminal laws surrounding pregnancies, including the decision to terminate one. But the criminalization of abortion isn’t a new post-Dobbs phenomenon. Women, especially women of color, have frequently faced punitive state laws regulating reproductive health. Dr. Michele Goodwin, attorney, law professor, and author of Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, joins SideBar to discuss her research into the long and continuing history of the government policing and criminalizing women’s reproductive health.