Every 74 seconds, someone in the US is sexually assaulted. And every nine minutes that ‘someone’ is a child, according to statistics collated by the anti-sexual violence non-profit Rainn.
Instead of sending alleged sex offenders to court, the Trump administration seems more interested in putting them in positions of power. Less than 4% of reported rapes, sexual assaults and child sexual abuse allegations in certain cities across the country ever lead to a sex crime conviction, an NBC News investigation from earlier this year found. To reiterate: that’s reported assaults. By some counts, nearly 80% of rapes and sexual assaults go unreported.
Don’t be too hard on the justice system, though. After all, police and prosecutors have got far more important things to think about than rapists. Namely: locking up pregnant women. According to new research by Pregnancy Justice, prosecutors in 16 states charged 412 people with pregnancy-related crimes in the first two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade.
What, you may be wondering, is a pregnancy-related crime? Good question! Most of the cases included in the new report involved low-income women and allegations of substance use during pregnancy. In one case described to the Guardian, a woman was arrested for felony child neglect after giving birth when a drug test came back positive for marijuana. The woman in that case had a medical marijuana card. While substance use during pregnancy is obviously a serious issue that can result in long-term harm to the baby, research suggests that criminalization actually worsens health outcomes.
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