Imagine dealing with the trauma of losing a pregnancy and facing a police investigation and criminal charges in the midst of your grief and devastation.

It seems like a dystopian nightmare. Why would a woman who is already physically and emotionally wrecked be put through this kind of cruelty by the state?

It’s been happening more often than most people realize.

The nonprofit Pregnancy Justice found that pregnancy-related criminal arrests of 1,379 people took place between Jan. 1, 2006, and June 23, 2022 -- the day before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, which overturned Roe. That's a span of 16.5 years. Contrast those findings with the group's 2013 study, which reported only 413 cases during the 33-year period from 1973 to 2005.

That's a startling increase: over three times as many cases in half as many years.

In one recent case out of Warren, Ohio, prosecutors charged Brittany Watts, 33, with felony abuse of a corpse after she miscarried and delivered a stillborn, 22-week-old fetus at home on the toilet. The prosecutors in her case seem unaware of how exceedingly common miscarriages are, as well as what they usually entail.

A miscarriage often causes cramping, severe pain and heavy bleeding -- copious blood loss, mixed with tissue and clots. Many women, especially those sent home from hospitals reluctant to treat them unless they are in imminent danger of dying, will endure the pain and bleeding in their bathrooms.

Where did these prosecutors expect Watts to deliver when she was sent home from the hospital after her water broke? Did they expect her to sift through the blood-filled toilet and collect the remains of her stillborn child in the aftermath of the trauma she just endured?

It seems inconceivable that instead of having compassion, they chose to charge her with a crime.

This kind of treatment may be what the future holds for a growing number of women as abortion foes and lawmakers push to establish the personhood of a fetus. Soon, even an embryo may have legal rights outweighing those of the woman carrying it.

Farah Diaz-Tello is the senior counsel and legal director at If/When/How, a nonprofit that trains and mobilizes lawyers and law students who support reproductive justice. She says the threat of pregnancy criminalization is a growing national problem.

“No one should be criminalized or punished because of their pregnancy, but prosecutors twist the laws to punish people for the circumstances or outcomes of their pregnancies,” Diaz-Tello said.

Research by If/When/How found that people are often criminalized when medical providers report their patients to the police when they seek emergency care. Charges may relate to the disposal of fetal remains -- which people experiencing a pregnancy loss have to do, in the midst of trauma, without support -- or they may even allege a homicide if someone who had considered an abortion later experiences a stillbirth.

The risks of pregnancy-related charges are higher for people who are already targeted for surveillance and criminalization, including people of color, young people and women in poverty.

Watts is Black.

“Cases like this show us that, depending on your identity, the state treats some losses as tragedies and some losses as crimes,” Diaz-Tello said.

The issue of women being arrested or convicted for losing a pregnancy has implications beyond the loss of abortion rights. The larger question is: Do women deserve to be treated as fully human?

When anti-abortion advocates push to establish a fetus as a person, the woman carrying the fetus becomes less of one. Her well-being -- physical and mental -- is such a lower priority that she can be imprisoned for anything perceived as harmful to the fetus, even if it is no longer viable.

“The trend of criminalizing pregnancy has been accelerating as abortion bans have proliferated,” said Dana Sussman, deputy executive director of Pregnancy Justice. She points out that there is no guide or playbook as to how one is supposed to react or respond after having such a loss.

Additionally, there is no established rule on the proper way to dispose of fetal remains. Her organization has documented cases in which women who have buried fetal remains have been prosecuted. There are also cases in which a woman brings fetal remains to the hospital and is arrested and investigated.

Fundamentally, these cases are about using the criminal legal system to create fear and uncertainty around controlling one’s own body. It also reveals an obvious lack of understanding of science and medicine.

“There’s the false idea that your individual choices can control your pregnancy outcomes,” Sussman said. Sadly, it's just not true: A woman who desperately wants a baby and tries to make every healthy choice can still lose the pregnancy. And yet, there are cases in which a woman suffers a stillbirth and is charged with murder.

“It’s not medically sound, and it’s inhumane on so many levels,” Sussman said.

There are days when a seemingly insignificant social media post captures the internet’s attention in an unexpected, colossal way.

Sometime during the fourth day of discourse about a tweet from a self-described "dog lady," I realized this was one such moment.

On Nov. 25, a woman posted a photo of a fluffy white dog and described her encounter with a stranger: "Small child runs up to Zoe. I body block and say, 'Maybe we don't run up to dogs we don't know.' The parent: 'She's 3.' Me: 'If she isn't on voice recall, maybe she should be leashed?'"

Her post has been viewed more than 23 million times, with thousands of comments, and has inspired countless takes. The anecdote didn’t provoke strong feelings for me, as either a parent or dog owner, but the massive and ongoing reaction to it has been intriguing.

What was this exchange really about?

It’s about how two vulnerable groups occupy space in public: children and dogs. Adults are responsible for minding the behavior and safety of both. This simple interaction illustrated a clash between permissive parenting culture and maximized dog culture. Toddler parent versus pet parent.

The online Greek chorus was eager to take sides. The majority of responses cast blame on the parent for a perceived lack of control over a toddler and for a response that deflected responsibility. To some extent, this is an understandable reaction by anyone who has seen a child run wild in public while a parent does little to rein in behavior.

But this critique fails to consider that toddlers of even the most conscientious parents will sometimes run up to cute dogs. Their tiny brains are still learning impulse control and manners and how the world works. Most dog owners know this, and will gently correct or protect a small child who approaches an unreliable or reactive pet. This comes with the territory of taking an animal into public spaces.

There seem to be many emboldened, vocal kid-haters and parent-shamers -- both online and in public -- who lack basic empathy.

Was it necessary to compare this child to a dog, suggesting to the parent that the toddler needs a leash? That’s responding to defensiveness with self-righteous rudeness.

Now, it’s true that more children today have disruptive behavior issues compared to when today’s adults grew up. There are lots of possible reasons, from environmental to biological to social. It’s also true that parents are more distracted these days -- just like all the rest of humanity -- by invasive technology.

But in the scenario described in the viral tweet, the 3-year-old was not behaving monstrously. A responsible dog owner should protect her dog from an overly enthusiastic toddler, just as a responsible parent should corral a toddler who runs off toward someone’s pet.

This tweet was a snapshot of the demise of basic courtesy in public. Both adults refused to extend grace toward one another. If we need to model better behavior for children, we also need to model it for each other. When the dog owner told the little girl not to run up to unknown dogs, the parent could have said, “Sorry, we’re still working on that. She’s 3.” A small acknowledgement that the dog owner helped keep the child safe would have diffused the dog owner’s frustration.

Similarly, when the parent responded defensively with “She’s 3,” the dog owner could have said, “Yes, that’s a challenging age.” This is a simple validation of the parent’s situation rather than a passive-aggressive criticism.

The most disturbing thing in the comments and replies to the tweet were the harsh condemnations of the parent and the declarations that it’s not a stranger’s job to keep someone else’s child safe.

Good grief. In a civilized society, it is everyone's job to try to keep an innocent child safe. It is still possible to respond to strangers with simple courtesy and de-escalate annoying social interactions.

Though I suppose if we all did so, we’d have a lot fewer viral tweets to talk about.

Within a few days of the start of the latest war in Gaza, I sent a series of texts to both our college-aged children.

I urged them to refrain from posting anything on social media that could be taken out of context or used to malign them or misrepresent their views. Emotions are inflamed, I wrote. Students are being doxxed and unfairly characterized as supporting terrorists.

They both bristled at the advice. To be fair, I felt uncomfortable giving it.

I remember vividly how I felt when I was in college and the war in Bosnia raged: More than 100,000 civilians were killed, up to 50,000 women raped and 2.2 million forced to flee their homes.

It was decades before social media existed, so I could only follow the reports in newspapers and had no digital platform to share my outrage and anguish. Had my parents told me to refrain from writing a column about it for my college paper, I would have questioned their sense of humanity.

The campus protests against the Vietnam War were before my time, but I was well versed in the history of student activism and the role it played in anti-war movements.

We’ve taught our children to speak up when they see injustice. We’ve raised them to be thoughtful and considered in how they express themselves. So why did I now feel anxious about what might appear in their private Instagram stories?

It had a lot to do with the news constantly showing up in my own feeds: "doxxing trucks" driving around college campuses, displaying students’ names and personal information and labeling them as "antisemites"; an eighth grader suspended for allegedly saying "Free Palestine"; job offers rescinded; equating those calling for peace as “pro-Hamas.”

My parental instinct to protect was triggered. This desire was heightened by all the reports I was reading about parents in the war zone who had been powerless to protect their children -- those murdered at a desert rave, those held hostage, those buried under the rubble of bombs.

Our young adult children have respected my wishes. But I’ve wrestled with what it means to stifle one’s voice. When wars are subsidized with billions of American tax dollars, citizens have a responsibility to be educated on whether those funds are being used to fight a just war that adheres to international laws. It’s not an easy task to sift through all the disinformation circulating online, but it is a question for each of us to answer. We have to be exposed to a variety of sources and viewpoints in forming our judgments.

I did not want to discourage our children from being engaged or informed about the world. For insight, I turned to author Devorah Heitner, who recently published “Growing up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World.” I’ve followed her thoughtful work on helping children navigate the complexities of growing up online.

“I think the current situation does seem to be especially challenging," she said. "But any time we post -- whether it is about Black Lives Matter, our views on climate change or Me Too, or perspectives on conflicts at home or abroad -- we are in a situation where someone could see and judge.”

That’s true, but students were not getting doxxed, blacklisted, suspended or losing jobs and opportunities for posting on those other issues. This moment is particularly precarious for students.

Granted, social media has never been a good place for nuanced conversation.

“People tend to pile on, engage with a lot of intense outrage or live in their own 'filter bubble,'" said Heitner. She suggested that another way to approach these issues is by learning more about them: reading, going to teach-ins and other events and supporting people who need help. She pointed out that in this particular conflict, there is a longstanding set of conflicting ideas, along with painful and traumatic histories.

“We need to think about what our posts accomplish, as opposed to other actions. What we post doesn’t tend to sway others who may feel entrenched. In-person conversations and thoughtful listening (when possible and safe) can offer a more productive place to grow and to really learn and engage," she said. "Ideally, colleges would offer a facilitated space for learning and conversations with trained facilitators.”

I agree that these kinds of honest, facilitated discussions should be taking place.

But I haven’t even seen this happening among adults. The chilling effect of dissent has silenced any number of thoughtful voices.

As a middle-aged parent, I can understand why.

Just don’t ask me to justify it to the 20-year-old version of myself.