In November 2022, 22-year-old Amari Marsh’s pregnancy test came up positive. But then she got what she assumed was her period. She moved on. In February 2023, right before South Carolina’s abortion ban, Marsh discovered she was pregnant after all. One night, a rush of contractions sent her to the bathroom, bloody and panicked. The daughter that she delivered didn’t survive. She was not allowed to see the infant. But months after that, she was arrested for murder.
Marsh spent 22 days in jail, facing 20 years to life. In August, a grand jury cleared her.
Although 10-20% of confirmed U.S. pregnancies end in loss, the enforcement of abortion bans finds pregnant people like Marsh “criminal” and pregnancy loss “suspicious.” And historically, the state has accused Black women of a particular crime: infanticide.
Historians often reject labeling enslaved Black maternal resistance to being deemed property as “infanticide.” However, following emancipation, as prisons allowed whites to continue exploiting Black labor, Black women, “unfit” for motherhood, were increasingly convicted of it. Truth or context didn’t matter. Children falling ill, miscarriages, and abortions were all considered infanticide.
The same legal systems that defined us as “human cargo” now control reproductive freedoms, separate Black families through foster care, and criminalize Black women like Amari Marsh. To the state, even the assumption of our agency will always be a threat.