Abortion is the next front on the crime beat

The headline: “A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a ‘Crime’ to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital.”

Nieman Lab spent the last week reporting on crime news now. Of course, we could not cover the entire landscape of news about crime, but we delved into podcasts, TikTok creators, digital news outlets, computational data–driven court reporting, and changes to the crime beat. What other changes are coming?

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.

Already, there is plenty to write about. An Ohio woman, Brittany Watts, was arrested after having a miscarriage in a bathroom. In Idaho and Tennessee, it is now a crime to help a pregnant minor travel to a state where abortion is legal. Josseli Barnica, a Texas mother, died in the hospital after having a miscarriage at 17 weeks because — as Barnica’s husband told ProPublica — “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat. It would be a crime to give her an 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.”

— Laura Hazard Owen

10 years after Serial: Nieman Lab looks at crime news now In our package: Digital news outlets reimagine the crime beat; TikTok creators balance ethics and money; public radio stations see more true crime in their future; AI might reshape court reporting. By Laura Hazard Owen.

Why criminal courts are still a black box for data journalists Testify’s groundbreaking investigations in Cleveland show the power of computational methods in courthouse reporting. Why, then, are its stories so hard to replicate? By Andrew Deck.

Is the crime news people crave the crime news they need? “We need to better understand what people mean when they say ‘safety.’” By Sophie Culpepper.

The Washington Post’s non-endorsement led to record-breaking weeks at other news orgs The Philadelphia Inquirer had its best week for new subscriptions ever and The Guardian U.S. broke its single-day fundraising record — twice. By Sarah Scire.

In a saturated true crime landscape, some content creators try to focus on victims and survivors “[Families] know it’s way quicker to get a story out through me than through Univision and Telemundo.” By Hanaa' Tameez.

In 2020, talk of “defunding the crime beat.” Where are we four years later? “Sometimes as journalists, we move around with an attitude that the community is just not going to [understand] us….I think that’s a huge obstacle to being able to do this better.” By Sarah Scire.

The future of true crime sounds like…public radio? Amid the downturn in audio, some executives think the public radio model — with a dash of true crime — might provide a way forward. By Neel Dhanesha.