Nieman Foundation at Harvard
The headline: “A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a ‘Crime’ to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital.”
Sarah Weinman is the author of two books, editor of two true crime anthologies, and a reporter. When I asked her what’s on her mind now, she mentioned “the fault lines of progress when it comes to bodily autonomy,” and told me, “I’m reporting on topics that we wouldn’t have thought of as crimes” before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion.
“Whether abortion laws target providers, aiders and abettors, or women themselves, the criminalization of abortion necessarily involves the surveillance of women,” Jolynn Dellinger and Stephanie K. Pell write in an introduction to their 2024 paper, “Bodies of evidence: The criminalization of abortion and surveillance of women in a post-Dobbs world.” “Women’s bodies are often the so-called scene of the crime, and their personal data will, more likely than not, be evidence of the crime.”
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