Criminalizing Pregnancy Loss: The Porous Boundary between Health Care and Law Enforcement

A rich literature explores connections between the criminal-legal and health care systems, yet little is known about how law enforcement gathers information in medical settings or how these practices shape criminal-legal outcomes for patients. We address these gaps through a thematic analysis of criminal court files from 31 cases involving pregnancy loss from 2022 to 2024. Our analysis identifies three overlapping, informal "gates" through which information moves from health care settings to investigators: (1) investigatory initiations by health care workers, (2) disclosures of protected health information, and (3) law enforcement's physical access to patients in clinical spaces. These data reveal a porous boundary between the health care and the criminal-legal systems that reflects the deep entwinement of state power, medical practice, and social control in reproductive health care. In identifying these gates, our findings indicate that formal criminalization in cases involving pregnancy loss frequently depends on informal information sharing across institutional boundaries.