[My sister represented Marla Pitchford, the first woman to be
prosecuted for a self-induced abortion in the United States. With Roe
overturned, her modern-day counterparts are facing an even worse
reality.]
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THE 1978 ABORTION TRIAL THAT FORESHADOWED OUR PRESENT-DAY DYSTOPIA  
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Katherine van Wormer
August 19, 2022
The Progressive
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_ My sister represented Marla Pitchford, the first woman to be
prosecuted for a self-induced abortion in the United States. With Roe
overturned, her modern-day counterparts are facing an even worse
reality. _

Marla Pitchford and her attorney, Flora Templeton Stuart, the
author's sister, after her not-guilty verdict was announced.,

 

n 1978, just five years after the Supreme Court enshrined abortion
rights in federal law, _Roe v. Wade_ was put to a dramatic test.
That was the year my sister, criminal defense attorney Flora
Templeton Stuart
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represented a young Kentucky woman in the first trial in the United
States for self-induced abortion.

Engaged to be married, Marla Pitchford discovered she was unexpectedly
pregnant. When she told her fiancé, he insisted she get an abortion
and drove her to clinics in Louisville, Kentucky and Nashville,
Tennessee. Because she was twenty to twenty-four weeks pregnant, the
clinics turned her down. 

After a wild outburst and then abandonment by her fiancé, Pitchford
grabbed the knitting needle from her sewing kit and plunged it into
her body. A few days later, after she almost died of sepsis in a
hospital, a nurse contacted the police. She was indicted for
manslaughter and self-inducing an abortion after the first trimester.

Although she was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity,
Pitchford suffered greatly throughout the ordeal
[[link removed]] of
a highly publicized trial
[[link removed]] shortly
after moving out of town to start a new life. Without _Roe v. Wade_,
Pitchford could have been convicted. Without _Roe_, the focus of her
trial would not have been a young woman’s tragic situation, but the
personhood of an unborn child. 

I asked my sister what we could learn from the prosecution of Marla
Pitchford today.

“Since the overturning of our constitutional right to have control
over our [bodies] women like Marla will face the possibility of jail
for an illegal abortion or be forced to raise a child they cannot
afford or raise,” she said. “Marla’s case, while the first of
its kind in 1978, will become the norm.”

Today, and especially over the past decade, hundreds of women have
been arrested for fetus endangerment. These arrests took place not
because [[link removed]] more
Americans disapproved of abortion, but because of the indefatigable
work of a determined few—anti-abortion extremists. 

Research conducted by the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW)
documents the arrest and prosecution rate of pregnant and formerly
pregnant women in the United States from 1973 to 2020. Typically, the
women were charged with manslaughter and homicide for attempting to
harm their fetuses. 

As reported
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NAPW director and reproductive rights lawyer Lynn Paltrow, 413 arrests
of pregnant women took place between 1973 and 2005. The arrests
stemmed from claims of fetal harm, whether by substance misuse or
through some other form of high-risk behavior. From 2006 to 2020,
NAPW tracked
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1,200 such arrests, an increase that was almost three-fold. Poor
women, women of color, and women in rural areas were the
usual targets
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these arrests.  

In cases of self-induced abortion, NAPW found that prosecutors have
charged women under a variety of state laws, including manslaughter,
fetal homicide, and homicide by child abuse. But in the past, NAPW
lawyers were able to get most of these charges dismissed as they were
out of compliance with state and federal law. 

Now, the repeal of _Roe v. Wade_ has not only allowed states to ban
abortion altogether
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gives them license to prosecute abortion seekers and
providers—including those who have no choice but self-induce.   

We have entered a new era of mass surveillance of pregnant people. A
paradigm shift has taken place with the fetus—now redefined by the
religious right as an “unborn child”—and even argued in some
evangelical circles to have rights separate from those of the mother.
The granting of constitutional rights to the “unborn,” as Paltrow
asserts, will force women to forfeit theirs. 

In states where abortion is banned, reproductive freedom is
essentially dead. Criminalization extends not only to those who
self-manage their abortions, but also to health care workers, clinical
staff, and pharmacists who provide reproductive care. State
authorities, including police, prosecutors, and child welfare workers,
can now exercise unprecedented power over pregnant people. 

But that’s not all: An especially worrisome legal development, if it
is not overturned by the courts, is the offering of a bounty to
private citizens who succeed in suing someone who has helped a person
get an illegal abortion. Texas
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and Oklahoma
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this type of incentive. 

Medication-induced abortion is an FDA-approved process that involves
[[link removed]] taking
two different medicines to end a pregnancy: mifepristone and
misoprostol. This method of abortion is effective during the first
trimester of pregnancy. The availability of non-surgical abortion
through these pills, which can be prescribed through telehealth or
simply ordered online, has been a godsend for many. To help make this
medication more readily available, President Joe Biden
recently issued
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executive order for support through the Department of Health and Human
Services. 

To the distress of anti-abortion activists, abortion by medication is
the simplest and most common form of abortion today. Because so many
reproductive health clinics such as Planned Parenthood have been
forced to close, many people will be managing their abortions on their
own. 

Proposals to restrict this form of abortion are well underway. Some
states, such as Wisconsin, have passed
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to prohibit telehealth abortion. Others are now working to make it a
crime for an out-of-state provider to offer medication abortion
services outside of the state. Realistically, very few of the women
who self-manage abortion in their own homes with medication shipped
through the mail will be known to authorities. But if there is a
resulting emergency medical outcome, the hospital (in a state in which
the practice is illegal) can be expected to file a report with law
enforcement. 

The criminalization of pregnancy has, in short, become a frightening
reality as ever-advancing punitive laws are passed across the country.
From the case of Marla Pitchford up to present day, these arrests have
gone from an anomaly to an almost standard practice. 

_Katherine van Wormer is a Professor Emerita of Social Work at
University of Northern Iowa and the co-author of Women and the
Criminal Justice System._

_Since 1909, The Progressive has aimed to amplify voices of dissent
and those under-represented in the mainstream, with a goal of
championing grassroots progressive politics. Our bedrock values are
nonviolence and freedom of speech._

_Based in Madison, Wisconsin, we publish on national politics,
culture, and events including U.S. foreign policy; we also focus on
issues of particular importance to the heartland. Two flagship
projects of The Progressive include Public School Shakedown
[[link removed]], which covers efforts
to resist the privatization of public education, and The Progressive
Media Project [[link removed]], aiming to diversify our
nation’s op-ed pages. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. _

* abortion rights
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* Roe v. Wade
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* Dobbs v. Jackson
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