MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE

If abortion is illegal, will every pregnancy lost be a potential crime?

- CECILIA NOWELL

ON A HUMID morning in early October, Brittney Poolaw sat in an Oklahoma courtroom waiting on a verdict. Instead of the jail uniform she'd donned for the past 18 months, she wore a yellow-and-white blouse with loose short sleeves. After less than three hours of deliberation, the jury returned with its decision: Poolaw was guilty of first-degree manslaughter. She was sentenced to four years behind bars.

But Poolaw, a 21-year-old and a member of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, had not driven recklessly or shot a gun. She'd had a miscarriage.

Poolaw will not be the last woman sent to prison for accidentally losing a pregnancy. Indeed, the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade suggests that cases like Poolaw's will soon become more common.

That's because, as Dana Sussman, acting executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, says, "not only did Roe v. Wade establish that there's a constitutional right to abortion, it also rejected the idea that fetuses are people under the Constitution." The opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, is steeped in language that paints fetuses-at any stage of development-as people. And when we lend credence to the idea of fetal personhood, it creates "a situation in which, when there is perceived harm to a fetus, it can be a victim of a crime. You can't add fetuses to the community of individuals who are entitled to constitutional rights without diminishing the rights of the person carrying that fetus," Sussman says.