In Texas, 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera was arrested and charged with murder for self-induced abortion. In California, 29-year-old Adora Perez served four years in prison after giving birth to a stillborn son. And in Mississippi, Latice Fisher was jailed after losing her baby at 36 weeks after police found she’d searched for abortion information online.
Even before the toppling of Roe v. Wade, the prosecution of women suspected of purposefully or accidentally ending a pregnancy was on the rise. There has been a movement to use state laws on child endangerment, feticide or murder to arrest women whose pregnancies ended prematurely, reproductive rights lawyers say, and it may be a harbinger of what’s to come.
“There’s going to be a massive increase in cases like these with Roe out of the picture,” said Mary McNamara, a San Francisco lawyer representing Perez, whose murder charge was dropped in May.
