Valena Beety (Indiana University Maurer School of Law), “Reproductive Wrongful Convictions: The Making of ‘Unfit’ Mothers”

Faulty forensic evidence and biased evidence relying on sex-based stereotypes have long been used to convict innocent women in situations where an accident or health event has been misconstrued as a criminal act. This talk will conceptualize and consider “reproductive wrongful convictions,” which are instances in which a noncriminal pregnancy-related event or act––such as a miscarriage, stillbirth, or taking legally prescribed medicine––is erroneously labeled as criminal. It will also attend to the ways that women with disabilities and from racially and economically subordinated communities are often labeled as “unfit” and made particularly vulnerable to these charges.  

Learn more about the speaker, Valena Beety, by visiting her faculty bio.

*This event is part of the speaker series, “Reproductive Justice, Criminal Law, and the Carceral State,” which considers the criminalization of reproduction—historical and contemporary, local and global—largely through the lens of reproductive justice.

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