Marie Witscher starts rolling chilled cookie dough on a lightly floured pastry mat shortly after sunrise.

It takes several long days of baking, decorating and packaging to make the thousands of Christmas cookies she and her daughters give out each year during the holidays.

At 99 years old, Witscher no longer fills the caramel chocolate treasures herself, or drizzles chocolate over the tops of the delicate confections. She can’t see well enough to frost the almond bonbons. Even getting the sprinkles just right is now too challenging. But that hasn’t stopped her from teaming with her daughters to continue a tradition she’s kept for more than 60 years: handcrafting nearly two dozen types of the prettiest and tastiest Christmas cookies.

Together, they make more than 2,000 cookies to deliver to nearly 50 friends, who eagerly await the annual delivery, as well as for their own families.

Witscher started the assembly line-style baking system in her home in the St. Louis area, but in recent years, the operation has moved to her daughter Ellen Trovillion’s house nearby. The project takes over the entire kitchen and dining room for nearly a week.

“It’s truly a labor of love,” Witscher said. “There’s so much pleasure in doing it.”

Trovillion said they have strict standards as to which cookie recipes make the cut each year.

“A chocolate chip cookie is not a Christmas cookie,” she said. “It’s an everyday cookie. Our cookies are not like that.”

The ones they select must rise above in taste, appearance and how they fit in the overall collection. They scout recipes throughout the year and keep a box of notes on the ones they’ve tried over the decades. The chocolate category includes chocolate raspberry crumb bars, chewy chocolate espresso cookies (half-dipped in white chocolate) and chocolate cherry cookies. Among the fruity cookies, they will make apricot Linzers, spumoni sticks and orange dream star cookies. There’s also a category for standout "others," like the pistachio "melting moment" sandwiches with raspberry buttercream.

Of course, everything is made from scratch.

“It’s important that our cookies look pretty,” Trovillion said.

In years past, Witscher would stay overnight at her daughter’s house during the cookie-making days so they could rise early in the morning and keep going late at night. They could finish everything in a three-day marathon of baking. Nowadays, Witscher can’t stand in the kitchen for as long. She takes breaks in between batches and goes back to sleep in her own bed at night.

But the hard work is part of the joy.

“We have fun chatting about stuff,” Witscher said.

She grew up baking with her mother, and then taught her daughters the same rituals. When the girls were in high school, they would bake with their mom for the holiday parties their parents hosted. Before Witscher’s husband passed away, she always sent a huge platter of cookies for the teachers at the school where he taught. She was a teacher herself for 40 years, and her other daughter, Kathleen Armstrong, followed in her parents’ footsteps.

One of the cookies the ladies always make, the pecan dreams, is from a recipe written in Witscher’s mother’s handwriting.

“There’s so much pleasure in giving them to someone and seeing their smile,” Witscher said. “It sort of spreads the Christmas spirit to others.”

Trovillion said her husband has asked why they have to make so many different kinds of cookies -- trays of which cover their dining room table and countertops before they can be finished and packaged.

“We’ve been doing it this way for 40 years,” she said. She added that she loves seeing people’s reactions when they make their deliveries. Some of her mom’s friends are in various retirement homes or assisted living facilities, and they light up when they see her carrying a plate or tin of Christmas treats.

One friend freezes the cookies and only allows herself and her husband one each per day. Another hoards them in a spot where no one else in the family will find them.

The list of recipients gets tweaked over the years, which can provoke its own anxiety. One time, a person asked if they had done something wrong that year since they didn’t get any cookies.

For others who have heard stories about the family’s legendary cookie plates, the most pressing question is: “How do I get on the list?”

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.