Criminal Penalties For Women Proposed

June 26, 2026

Security camera mounted on a barbed wire fence against a clear blue sky

As national leaders argue about abortion, a new push to jail women themselves is turning up the heat on an already broken system.

Story Snapshot

Over 60 activists, including Riley Gaines and Abby Johnson, signed a resolution urging criminal penalties for women who get abortions.
The move challenges decades of pro-life strategy that focused punishment on doctors, not patients, and splits conservatives.
Major legal and human rights groups warn that criminalizing women invites state surveillance and risks deadly delays in emergency care.
Both sides highlight women’s harm: one points to abortion pill risks, the other to women denied care under strict bans.

A new resolution that targets women, not just doctors

On the fourth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that ended nationwide abortion rights, more than 60 conservative figures signed a petition urging lawmakers to end “legal immunities” for women who obtain abortions.^[1] The signers include high-profile activists like former swimmer Riley Gaines and pro-life advocate Abby Johnson, giving the push a recognizable face on the right.^[1] The resolution calls for laws that treat unborn children as persons from fertilization and allow full criminal penalties when their lives are ended.^[1]

For decades, most major pro-life groups in the United States argued that the law should punish abortion providers, not the women seeking abortions.^[1]^[9] Groups like National Right to Life still insist they oppose penalties for women and have urged lawmakers to avoid such measures.^[2]^[9] The new petition breaks with that norm. It lines up with a smaller but growing “abortion abolitionist” movement that wants abortion treated as homicide and applied to everyone involved, including the pregnant woman herself.^[2]

Supporters: women are harmed and the law should reflect that

Supporters of criminal penalties for women say current law treats women as passive victims and lets them avoid responsibility, even when they choose abortion over a child’s life. Some point to the abortion pill mifepristone, arguing that women were not told the truth about its risks. On Riley Gaines’s show, a Yale-trained lawyer named Erin claimed that the Food and Drug Administration “black box” warning shows about 1 in 25 women who take mifepristone end up in the emergency room.^[3]

Erin also described stories of women who say the pills led to trauma. One client, Elizabeth Gillette, reportedly faced the shock of dealing with fetal remains on her own after using abortion drugs at home, and now works with Alliance Defending Freedom in a case challenging mail-order pills.^[4] Another woman, Rosalie Marquez, allegedly lost a wanted child after a boyfriend pressured her into taking the drug, and her story has been cited in federal court fights over pill access.^[3] These stories fuel the claim that permissive abortion policy hurts women as well as unborn children.

Opponents: criminalizing women invites abuse of power

Many legal and human rights organizations argue that punishing women for abortions crosses a line and hands the government dangerous new power. The American Bar Association passed a resolution opposing the criminalization of people for self-managed abortion or any pregnancy outcome, warning that such laws threaten basic fairness in the justice system.^[6] Amnesty International argues that, under global human rights standards, countries should remove criminal penalties for abortion and ensure emergency medical care without fear of prosecution.^[7]^[8]

Analysts also warn about how enforcement would work in real life. A Brookings Institution report explains that, as abortion is criminalized, prosecutors can and do tap into phone data, period apps, search histories, and location tracking to build cases against women suspected of ending pregnancies.^[12] This kind of surveillance worries people across the political spectrum who already distrust the “deep state” and fear that powerful agencies will track everyday Americans while elites remain untouched.

Real-world fallout: doctors on edge, women caught in the middle

Even without direct penalties for women, current bans already create chilling effects in hospitals. A brief from the health policy group KFF shows that most abortion-ban states focus criminal penalties on clinicians, with some doctors facing felony charges and possible decades in prison.^[9] When the law is harsh and unclear, many doctors hesitate to act until a woman is near death, because they fear a prosecutor second-guessing their medical judgment later on.^[9]^[12]

Those fears are not just theory. In Texas, the group Center for Reproductive Rights has gone to court on behalf of women who say they were denied care while their health and fertility were at risk because doctors worried about breaking the state’s abortion law.^[3] Stories like these feed a broader public sense that political fights in statehouses and Washington are leaving real women in impossible situations, while leaders argue over talking points and midterm polls.

What this fight reveals about trust in government

The drive to punish women for abortions highlights how far distrust of the system now runs on both left and right. Supporters see federal agencies like the Food and Drug Administration as captured by drug makers and abortion advocates, pushing mail-order pills while ignoring safety warnings.^[3] Opponents see the same government, and local prosecutors, as willing to dig through private data and criminal records to enforce moral rules on women’s bodies.^[12] Both sides point to powerful institutions they believe are serving elites, not ordinary families.

Globally, more than 130 countries still allow criminal penalties for people who seek abortions, often including prison time.^[19] In the United States, history shows that pregnant women were usually spared direct prosecution, even when abortion was banned before the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.^[16]^[21] The Gaines–Johnson resolution and similar efforts test whether America will keep that tradition. For many readers who already feel squeezed by rising costs and unresponsive leaders, the idea of the state jailing women for private medical choices will sound like one more sign that those in power are more interested in control than in solving the real problems families face.