Advocates for abortion rights are paying close attention to what they describe as a concerning and growing trend: proposed legislation in several states that could allow people who have abortions to be charged with homicide.
According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is monitoring these proposals, such bills have been introduced in at least 10 states for the 2025 legislative session:, , , , , , , , , and . The majority of these states have already outlawed abortion, either in almost all cases or after six weeks of pregnancy. ( and are the only exceptions; both had previously enacted near-total abortion bans, but those have since been struck down.)
The bills refer to an embryo or fetus as an “unborn child” or “preborn child.” They assert that an embryo or fetus can be the victim of a homicide, potentially leading to charges and prosecutions for people who seek abortions. Some bills also aim to eliminate provisions in state laws that shielded pregnant individuals seeking abortions from prosecution. The bills have limited exceptions, such as in circumstances resulting in “the unintentional death of a preborn child” after “life-saving procedures to save the life of a mother when accompanied by reasonable steps, if available, to save the life of her preborn child.”
Lizzy Hinkley, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, believes that there has been an increase in the number of these bills introduced this year, which she finds “very, very alarming.” Hinkley notes that many of the states considering these bills, such as South Carolina, .
“It’s very much a tactic from the anti-abortion movement to introduce bills that attempt to control, oppress, and punish pregnant individuals,” she says.
Three of these bills—in , , and —have since been unsuccessful. Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law specializing in abortion, believes that the likelihood of the remaining bills passing is “relatively low.” These types of proposals are generally unpopular; Ziegler says that even conservatives and anti-abortion activists disagree on whether to penalize people who seek abortions.
“However, I think [these bills are] more likely to pass now than in previous years, and the fact that they continue to reappear is significant,” Ziegler says. She adds that more of these bills have been introduced since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in , which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion.
Typically, anti-abortion laws penalize medical professionals who provide abortion care. On March 17, the Texas attorney general announced that a midwife in the state had been on charges of illegally providing abortions—the first time Texas officials have brought these kinds of charges forward since the Dobbs ruling. Separately, a New York-based doctor is a civil suit in Texas and criminal charges in Louisiana for allegedly prescribing abortion pills via telemedicine to patients in those states.
The recent criminalization bills also incorporate fetal personhood rhetoric—a legal concept that seeks to grant embryos and fetuses the same legal rights as people. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an declaring that the U.S. government will only recognize “two sexes, male and female.” Abortion rights advocates , saying that because it claims that sex is assigned “at conception.”
Hinkley says that research has already indicated a rise in pregnancy criminalization since the Dobbs decision. A report released in September by Pregnancy Justice, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the rights of pregnant individuals, that at least 210 pregnant individuals faced criminal charges for “conduct associated” with pregnancy in the year following the Dobbs ruling—the highest number recorded in one year. Hinkley says that report “portended what we’re seeing right now.”
“It doesn’t matter if [the bills] pass this year; they’ll be back next year,” Hinkley says. “There was a time not that long ago when a total abortion ban without exceptions for rape and incest, or a total abortion ban, period, without exceptions to save a pregnant person’s health, would have seemed absurd. But that is the reality that pregnant people are living in across the country right now. So whether it’s this year or next year or a few years down the road, this is a very harrowing indication of what the end game is for anti-abortion legislators and anti-abortion activists.”
