Abortion is the next front on the crime beat

The headline: “A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a ‘Crime’ to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital.”

Nieman Lab spent the last week reporting on crime news now. Of course, we could not cover the entire landscape of news about crime, but we delved into podcasts, TikTok creators, digital news outlets, computational data–driven court reporting, and changes to the crime beat. What other changes are coming?

Sarah Weinman is the author of two books, editor of two true crime anthologies, and a reporter. When I asked her what’s on her mind now, she mentioned “the fault lines of progress when it comes to bodily autonomy,” and told me, “I’m reporting on topics that we wouldn’t have thought of as crimes” before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion.

Already, there is plenty to write about. An Ohio woman, Brittany Watts, was arrested after having a miscarriage in a bathroom. In Idaho and Tennessee, it is now a crime to help a pregnant minor travel to a state where abortion is legal. Josseli Barnica, a Texas mother, died in the hospital after having a miscarriage at 17 weeks because — as Barnica’s husband told ProPublica — “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat. It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”

“Whether abortion laws target providers, aiders and abettors, or women themselves, the criminalization of abortion necessarily involves the surveillance of women,” Jolynn Dellinger and Stephanie K. Pell write in an introduction to their 2024 paper, “Bodies of evidence: The criminalization of abortion and surveillance of women in a post-Dobbs world.” “Women’s bodies are often the so-called scene of the crime, and their personal data will, more likely than not, be evidence of the crime.”