Mapping the Criminalization of Black Motherhood

Throughout history, Black women have been subjected to sexual and reproductive double-standards. Society depicts them as hypersexual beings unable to be raped, but when their sexuality results in a pregnancy, the State weaponizes their reproductive abilities to maintain their subjugation. In the last forty years, the United States has seen an increase in reproductive rights. With greater reproductive rights comes greater bodily autonomy and freedom. As a result, the State has used the carceral state to control Black women’s reproduction and motherhood and lessen those freedoms recently allotted to them. Beginning with the War on Drugs, “crack babies” were depicted as products of Black motherhood’s neglect due to drug use. The “welfare queen” stereotype further vilified poor mothers, instilling the idea that their socioeconomic status made them unfit parents and making Black motherhood and Black reproduction social issues. More recently, state legislatures have passed multiple measures to protect fetal life through chemical endangerment and targeted restrictions on abortion providers (TRAP) laws, often disproportionately impacting and restricting Black women’s reproductive and bodily autonomy. In criminalizing and increasing its involvement in Black women’s reproductive choices, the State penalizes Black women for wanting and not wanting to be mothers, ingraining the idea that Black mothers are unfit. This project intends to create a visual and geographical representation of the State’s involvement by mapping instances where the State inserts itself in Black women’s pregnancies and motherhood through criminalization.

Cases for this project were found using both popular and local news sources and studies conducted by  Paltrow and Flavin (2013)  and  Paltrow (1992)  that examine the prevalence of Black motherhood’s criminalization in the United States. Each point on this map includes a brief description of the woman’s case, outcome, and the State’s reasoning behind her criminalization. While not all cases included in this project ended in incarceration, all women in this map experienced increased involvement with the carceral state following their charges, such as interaction with child protective services or surveillance through probation programs. For most cases included, these women intended to carry their pregnancies to term, meaning most women wanted their pregnancies and never intended to harm their fetuses.

This map includes sixteen cases dated between 1987 and 2018. Twelve states and territories are represented in this map: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Washington D.C., and Wisconsin. Four cases took place in the 1980s, four in the 1990s, three in the 2000s, and five in the 2010s. The cases found in the 1980s cited drug use as the primary motive for charging the women. In the 1990s, the four cases showed that drug-related charges were still prevalent, but cases from the late-1990s also show that the State increased its involvement to specifically protect fetal life. All cases in the 2000s and four in the 2010s concerned fetal personhood and miscarriages or stillbirths as the primary motives for criminalizing the woman. One case in the 2010s specifically cited drug use as the reason for the arrest.

The points on this map illustrate two trends. The first is a historical trend of how the State criminalizes Black motherhood. Black motherhood was first criminalized during the War on Drugs to extend drug-related punishment. Black women compose the most cases concerning pregnancy and drug use, specifically in the late 1980s and early 1990s during the War on Drugs. Flavin and Paltrow (2013) find that Black women  composed fifty-two percent of cases criminalizing pregnancy and state intervention between 1973 and 2005 . This trend is attributable primarily to the unfounded “crack baby” hysteria put forth by the War on Drugs. As Dorothy Roberts states in  Killing the Black Body , the State’s concern for children exposed to crack made it easier for them to target Black women during the War on Drugs (Roberts 177). Charges against Black women were specifically for using drugs during pregnancy, citing child endangerment or drug trafficking to a minor. Pregnant women faced longer prison sentences for drug-related charges and would have faced lesser sentences for similar drug-related offenses if they were not pregnant (Roberts 181). In doing this, the War on Drugs punished drug-addicted pregnant women more harshly for not terminating their pregnancies instead of providing them better access to treatment programs to combat their drug addictions.

Second, the State used the “welfare queen” stereotype to insert itself in Black motherhood in the 1990s. Criminalizing Black women for drug use during pregnancy legitimized fetal rights and put forth the idea that Black children’s poor health outcomes were due to their mothers’ failures during their pregnancies instead of the material conditions they were born into (Roberts 179). Similarly, the media perpetuated the “welfare queen” stereotype, depicting poor Black mothers as uncontrollably reproducing to increase their welfare benefits and impressing the idea that Black mothers were a burden to society and bad mothers because of their socioeconomic status. With impoverished mothers already targeted through legislation arising from the War on Drugs, the “welfare queen” stereotype furthered society’s image that Black women were unfit mothers because they could not support their families without government assistance. Roberts  discusses that the State used reproductive penalties , such as coercive birth control practices, to draw attention away from the State’s intervention toward the idea that poor motherhood created the deplorable conditions “welfare queens” raised their children in (Roberts 2014). This diversion moves the onus of poverty due to social inequalities from the State to Black women. The State then passed legislation and provisions to welfare programs to penalize women who depended on welfare to support their families, extending the idea that Black mothers could not care for their children and had no hope of improving. 

In the late-1990s, the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) facilitated mother-children separation across the country, prioritizing child safety and well-being over family preservation and reunification.  The AFSA victimized children and demonized mothers with prior drug charges , putting forth the idea that these mothers could not be rehabilitated and were perpetually “bad,” similar to how the “welfare queen” stereotype depicts Black mothers as inherently unfit. When  Suzanne Sellers  gave birth in 1995, her son tested positive for illegal substances. Sellers underwent treatment, and two years later, an Illinois child protective services agent coerced Sellers to sign away her parental rights under the AFSA. Despite actively trying to improve her parenting and children’s lives, Sellers was penalized for her drug use years after. By punishing women for their material conditions and past behaviors, the State decides to do nothing to help these mothers and intervene simultaneously. Such interventions, where authorities separate families or detain pregnant women to protect the fetus, appear to be a growing trend in the late 1990s but were not as concentrated on Black women as drug-related interventions were. Regardless, these interventions increase Black women’s involvement with the carceral state by increasing the State’s supervision of their lives, further restricting their freedoms, reproductively and generally.

More recently, the State has used TRAP and fetal personhood legislation as the third way it criminalizes Black motherhood. TRAP laws criminalize abortions and, indirectly, miscarriages and stillbirths, citing the sanctity of life, the potentiality of fetal personhood, and sometimes the pregnant person’s failure to “protect” the fetus.  Georgia’s Living Infants Fairness Equality (LIFE) Act , also known as HB481 or the “fetal heartbeat” bill, prohibits abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, criminalizing all abortions. Since some forms of abortions, such as medical abortions using misoprostol, present similar to a miscarriage, the LIFE Act is especially dangerous to pregnant Black women because  they are at a greater risk for miscarriages and stillbirths . For example,  Michelle Marie Greenup  arrived at a Louisiana hospital in 2003 after miscarrying due to her Depo-Provera shot. Doctors assumed she gave birth, and law enforcement charged Greenup with second-degree murder. Greenup’s case is an example of how legislation like Georgia’s TRAP laws may weaponize women’s miscarriages as self-induced abortions to punished Black women.  Mississippi, Kentucky, and South Carolina have proposed similar TRAP laws , and  Alabama recently passed chemical endangerment laws . Chemical endangerment laws penalize mothers for endangering their fetus through possibly dangerous chemical exposure like drugs. For example, in 2012,  an anonymous woman in Alabama  was sentenced to five years in prison six months after her son tested positive for drugs at birth. Before her conviction, she never interacted with the carceral state and immediately attended a drug treatment after giving birth. As seen in the 1990s with Suzanne Sellers, the State prioritizes protecting the child from their mother’s past behaviors instead of keeping families together, even after mothers provide evidence of rehabilitation.

The second trend illustrated in this map is the geography of Black motherhood’s criminalization. Eleven of the sixteen cases on this map occurred in southern states. In the War on Drugs era, South Carolina and Florida have  the most documented cases where law enforcement criminalizes Black mothers for their alleged drug use . Currently, southern states are also the most hostile to reproductive rights by passing TRAP laws and prioritizing fetal personhood over maternal health. This map shows that the states where Black mothers faced the most drug-use related charges while pregnant are also states whose legislatures are proposing these “personhood” laws. Black mothers were the most criminalized for their drug use during pregnancy in states where they are now the most at risk for punishment when they experience miscarriages or stillbirths. Meanwhile, cases in northern states occurred near cities with large Black populations, such as Chicago, Milwaukee, and Detroit, which may indicate how and where the State chose to enforce these policies. The greater case concentration in Southern states and new proposals in Southern state legislatures show that Black women’s reproductive freedoms are unevenly restricted in the United States. However, this does not mean that efforts to expand reproductive rights should be focused on Southern states. This map also shows that Northern states are complicit in impeding Black women’s reproductive choices through protective custody and increasing child protective service involvement in Black families.

All cases provided in this map show evidence of the same idea: fetal lives are more important than Black women’s autonomy. In all instances, the State reasons that it is protecting fetal well-being from the mother’s potential abuse. All instances illustrate how Black mothers are unfit parents. All instances illustrate how any aspect of a pregnant woman’s life may be subject to surveillance because anything can be used as evidence for child abuse while she is pregnant. In punishing Black women for their behaviors while pregnant and for their miscarriages or stillbirths, the State intentionally punishes Black women for wanting to carry their pregnancies to term, but if a Black woman chooses not to continue her pregnancy, the State may penalize her. No matter what, the State is instilling the social idea that Black motherhood is bad and Black mothers are unfit at all stages of a fetus’s and child’s life. While the State’s methods of criminalizing Black women’s reproductive abilities may have changed over time, it has kept its goal of maintaining Black women’s subordination.

Works Cited

CDC. “Stillbirth Data and Statistics.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 26 Sept. 2019,  https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/stillbirth/data.html . Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.

Lovegrove, Jamie. “SC House Approves ‘fetal Heartbeat’ Bill to Ban Most Abortions.” Palmetto Politics, 14 Sept. 2020,  https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/sc-house-approves-fetal-heartbeat-bill-to-ban-most-abortions/article_442e0dc8-66a7-11e9-be0d-93a4902944f2.html . Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.

Martin, Nina. “Take a Valium, Lose Your Kid, Go to Jail.” ProPublica, 23 Sept. 2015,  https://www.propublica.org/article/when-the-womb-is-a-crime-scene?token=_ZxdeE_wocC45nxQoi4TRYZ4jEdTGjPb . Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.

Paltrow, Lynn M. Criminal Prosecutions Against Pregnant Women: National Update and Overview. Reproductive Freedom Project, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, 31 Jan. 1992,  https://www.nationaladvocatesforpregnantwomen.org/criminal_prosecutions_against_pregnant_women/ . 

Paltrow, Lynn M., and Jeanne Flavin. “Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973–2005: Implications for Women’s Legal Status and Public Health.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, vol. 38, no. 2, Apr. 2013, pp. 299–343, doi:10.1215/03616878-1966324.

Roberts, Dorothy. “Complicating the Triangle of Race, Class and State: The Insights of Black Feminists.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 37, no. 10, 2014, pp. 1776–82, doi:10.1080/01419870.2014.931988.

Roberts, Dorothy. “Making Reproduction a Crime.” Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, 2nd ed., Vintage Books, 2017, pp. 150–201.

Sellers, Suzanne. “Demonizing ‘Crack Mothers,’ Victimizing Their Children.” The New York Times, 5 Jan. 2019,  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/letters/crack-mothers-children.html . Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.

Stern, Mark Joseph. “Georgia Just Criminalized Abortion. Women Who Terminate Their Pregnancies Would Receive Life in Prison.” Slate, 7 May 2019.  https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/hb-481-georgia-law-criminalizes-abortion-subjects-women-to-life-in-prison.html . Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.