How will incarcerated people be affected by state abortion bans?

This article delves into the implications for people incarcerated in the US states that have instituted abortion bans since the 2022 Dobbs Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Prior to Dobbs, authors Bell et al. noted, “The courts maintained that incarcerated individuals retained their constitutional right to abortion.” It is unclear if pregnant prisoners in abortion limiting states will continue to be given transportation to states where abortion is legal. One factor may include whether travel distances are considered too long. Bell et al. wanted to provide an estimate of how many pregnant prisoners in the US might need abortion services and the distance to the nearest abortion providers. They first determined how many pregnant people were incarcerated in state and federal prisons across the country in 2021, the year before abortion bans went into effect. They calculated this with data available in the study, National Prisoner Statistics (NPS), [United States], 1978-2021 (ICPSR 38555). NPS contains annual national- and state-level data on the number of prisoners in state and federal prison facilities, as well as data about other key characteristics of the population. The National Archive on Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) provides NPS data dating back to 1978.

In addition to NPS, Bell et al. used data sources that contained the number of people pregnant in both state and federal facilities, and they used other sources that provided both US prison locations and abortion provider locations. The authors then categorized the US states by the strictness of the abortion policy environment, identifying states with no exceptions for rape or the physical health of the pregnant person. Finally, they used state-by-state data on births and abortions to estimate the “abortion ratio”– the proportion of pregnancies ending in abortion. Applying this ratio to the number of pregnant women incarcerated gave them an estimate of the number who might seek an abortion each year if they still had access. Bell et al. estimated that in 2021, there were 638 pregnant people incarcerated in state and federal prisons. Based on state-specific abortion ratios, the authors estimated 110 of them would potentially need an abortion. Of those, 55 were incarcerated in states that have banned or restricted abortion access after the Dobbs decision. The authors also found that on average, prisons in banned/restricted states were over 200 miles from the nearest abortion provider.

According to the authors, the number of prisoners being directly affected by Dobbs may seem small, but will likely increase over time, representing a profound human rights issue. Bell et al. noted that prior to Dobbs, incarcerated women already faced hardships in accessing vital healthcare, and abortion bans could exacerbate existing racial, social, and economic inequities in prisons. They also pointed out that pregnant prisoners were already far less likely to get an abortion than members of the general public, due to the many logistical, cost, transportation, and access constraints put upon them. The authors also stated that carrying unwanted pregnancies to term against their will in prison takes away peoples’ personal agency and autonomy, and “exposes them to the risks of pregnancy and birth.” One disturbing example of this, according to the authors, would be if those who become pregnant in prison as a result of rape were not allowed access “to all lawful pregnancy-related medical services,” as required by the Prison Rape Elimination Act. In the states that banned abortion without exceptions for rape, people may well be forced “to carry a pregnancy conceived in state violence as part of their sentence.”