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ProPublica's Nina Martin reports on American systems and institutions that fail or mistreat people on the basis of their gender or sexuality.

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The biggest threats to life, born and unborn, do not come from mommies but rather from poverty, barriers to health care, persistent racism, environmental hazards, and prosecutions like [the one against Rennie Gibbs]. Every medical group, including the ones that focus on babies, says that [prosecuting pregnant women for using drugs] frighten[s] women away from necessary care to the detriment of children.

Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, on a Mississippi judge’s decision to throw out murder charges against Rennie Gibbs in the death of her stillborn daughter

read my ProPublica piece on the ruling here

Recently I wrote about Rennie Gibbs, a Mississippi teenager who gave birth to a stillbirth daughter in 2006 and was charged with “depraved heart murder” because the baby had traces of a cocaine byproduct in her blood. These two charts show why...Recently I wrote about Rennie Gibbs, a Mississippi teenager who gave birth to a stillbirth daughter in 2006 and was charged with “depraved heart murder” because the baby had traces of a cocaine byproduct in her blood. These two charts show why...

Recently I wrote about Rennie Gibbs, a Mississippi teenager who gave birth to a stillbirth daughter in 2006 and was charged with “depraved heart murder” because the baby had traces of a cocaine byproduct in her blood. These two charts show why advocates in the state find the case so “tremendously, tremendously frightening,” in the words of the Children Defense Fund’s southern regional director, Oleta Fitzgerald. 

Mississippi has one of the worst records for maternal and infant health in the U.S., as well as some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Many of the factors that have been linked to prenatal and infant mortality — poverty, poor nutrition, lack of access to healthcare, pollution, stress — are rampant there. 

The concern is that if Gibbs case goes forward, the precedent could be used to criminally punish Mississippi girls and women for everything from miscarriage to abortion — scary in a place that has so much prenatal mortality for very complex reasons. Another worry:  African Americans, who suffer twice as many stillbirths as whites, could be affected the most.

Read my ProPublica story on the case here.

 (Charts via Mississippi State Department of Health)