Many of the stories included in Pregnancy Justice's report made national headlines. In 2014, for example, a Tennessee woman who was nine months pregnant was arrested for driving without a seatbelt. She had engaged "in conduct which placed her baby in imminent danger or death or serious bodily injury," according to the warrant for her arrest.

Geography and income level are the greatest factors when it comes to pregnancy criminalization, according to the report. White pregnant people who are low-income are the most criminalized group, while Black pregnant people who are low-income are also overrepresented in the data.

Around 80% of these arrests occurred in five Southern states: Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Oklahoma. Three of those states - Alabama, South Carolina and Oklahoma - recognize fetuses as people in their criminal codes, an increasingly common type of legislation known as fetal personhood laws.

"We can tie this increase in criminalization directly to the expansion of the increased ideology of fetal personhood. The idea that a fetus or a fertilized egg has the same, if not more rights, than the actual person carrying the pregnancy," Rivera said. "During the period that we're looking at 2006 to June 2022, fetal personhood gained influence and has increasingly become embedded in laws in judicial decisions."