Being on probation and parole is becoming a uniquely challenging situation for pregnant people in Georgia following the Supreme Court’s recent Dobbsdecision overturning Roe v. Wade. Last week, a federal appeals court allowed a 2019 law prohibiting abortion after six weeks–before many women even know they are pregnant–to immediately take effect.
The near-total ban will severely constrict the reproductive choices of Georgians on probation and parole. Residents in this category who need an abortion will be faced with an impossible choice: giving birth and caring for a baby they do not want and likely cannot afford to raise, or traveling out of state for an abortion and risking a violation of their parole or probation conditions, which could land them back in prison.
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Around 666,400 women are on parole or probation at any given day in the U.S., according to a recent Prison Policy Initiative report. In Georgia, the rateof people under probation is the hightest in the nation, affecting hundreds of thousands. Around one in 25 adults are under “community supervision.”
This stems from a law that forced judges to give the maximum sentence to people convicted of a second felony, Andrew Fleischman, an appellate lawyer at the Atlanta firm Ross & Pines, told Bolts. “What this ends up meaning is that people who have relatively minor second offenses end up getting 20 years probation,” he said.
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