# Constructing criminality: a thematic analysis of national news media reporting on self-managed abortion criminalisation in the United States

## TL;DR

This paper examines how U.S. national news media report on criminal cases involving self-managed abortions, revealing patterns that may contribute to unjust legal outcomes.

## Contribution

The study provides the first qualitative analysis of national news media coverage of self-managed abortion criminalisation in the U.S.

## Key findings

- News media often personify the fetus as a victim while vilifying individuals accused of self-managed abortion.
- Journalists frequently use past personal histories to undermine the character of criminalised individuals.
- Media coverage tends to treat biased police statements as objective, promoting a presumption of guilt.

## Abstract

Self-managed abortion (SMA) is prevalent in the United States (US) and has become increasingly common since the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that allowed states to enact early abortion bans. Although SMA is legal in nearly every US state, the number of people who have been arrested for alleged participation in SMA has continued to grow in recent years. Reproductive justice advocates have identified news media portrayals of these cases as a likely contributor to adverse legal outcomes for criminalised individuals; however, researchers have not yet investigated this. Therefore, we aimed to qualitatively assess the ways in which national news media outlets depict instances of SMA criminalisation. We identified 41 articles published by the top five national newspapers between 2000 and 2023 and conducted a reflexive thematic analysis. Our analysis revealed concerning patterns in news media coverage, in which journalists frequently personified the fetus as a victim while vilifying the criminalised person, undermined the character of the criminalised person through selected personal histories, and promoted the presumption of guilt by treating biased police statements as objective accounts. These findings contribute to the literature by describing the ways in which reproductive injustice is legitimised through news media and provide empirical support for reproductive justice advocates’ calls for more responsible journalism in news media coverage of SMA criminalisation.

Having an abortion at home without a healthcare provider (also known as self-managed abortion or SMA) is common in the United States. Although SMA is legal in nearly every state, the number of people who have been arrested for alleged SMA has continued to grow in recent years. Reproductive justice advocates have identified media coverage as a major influence on how the public views people facing criminal proceedings after SMA; however, researchers have not yet examined this. We analysed 41 news articles on SMA criminalisation published between 2000 and 2023 by the five most popular national newspapers in the United States. Our results show that journalists often (1) portrayed the fetus as a victim who was harmed by the criminalised person, (2) used stories about the criminalised person’s past to portray them as immoral, and (3) repeated police statements that assumed the criminalised person was guilty. These results build on what is known about SMA criminalisation by analysing news media depictions that help to make SMA criminalisation seem normal. Our findings also add further evidence to reproductive justice advocates’ demands for journalists to use better practices when reporting on SMA criminalisation.