Things were already hellish for pregnant people in prisons and jails. With the Roe reversal, it’s about to get even worse.

The United States incarcerates more women than anywhere else in the world, disproportionately women of color, and most of them are of reproductive age. An estimated 58,000 pregnant people are sent behind bars each year—the vast majority of them to jail, which means that many are still waiting for trial and haven’t been convicted of a crime but are too poor to pay bail. Some of them are innocent. Most are accused of nonviolent offenses.

And many of them want abortions, for various reasons. A Johns Hopkins study published last year examined pregnancy outcomes in four jail systems that allowed abortion during a 12-month period in 2016 and 2017. The researchers found that a whopping 33 percent of non-miscarriage pregnancies within those jails ended with abortions—significantly higher than the 18 percent rate of abortions in the free world. “[P]regnant incarcerated individuals, at least those entering jails, may actually have an increased need for abortion access,” wrote Dr. Carolyn Sufrin […]