Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity

Praise for Pink Crime: “A startling revelation of misogyny embedded deeply in the U.S. legal system.”—Publishers Weekly “In Pink Crime, Valena Beety names something we’ve been watching in horror but have rarely been able to articulate. She writes with the precision of a litigator and the passion of someone who knows how much is at stake. Pink Crime is a vital service, a warning, and a blueprint for fighting back.”—Irin Carmon, author of Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America and Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg “In her searing and memorable new book, Valena Beety explores a trap that can ensnare the innocent—prosecutions based on suspicions rooted not primarily in what they’ve done, but in who they are. Beety shows how pregnant and queer people are vulnerable to charges others would not face, especially when poverty plays a role. And she also offers hope by charging a path to resistance.”—Emily Bazelon, author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration “As a wrongfully convicted queer woman I am not surprised to read about these other unjust cases against women. Why do gender norms, moral panics, purity, and motherhood enter into the courts of law? What happened to seeking truth and justice? Will women ever have their own autonomy?”—Anna Vasquez, exoneree, president of the Innocence Network, and Outreach and Education Director of the Innocence Project of Texas “Pink Crime weaves together the threads of prosecutorial misconduct and the use of junk science with the fall of Roe v. Wade and creeping threats to data privacy not only to educate but to activate all of us to stop the ongoing criminalization of our bodies and identities.”—Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project “A critical interrogation of the ways in which marginalized, feminized identities—woman; mother; queer; etc.—are weaponized to criminalize innocent people, often in cases where no crime has been committed at all. Beety’s analysis is clear, concise, and compelling. By focusing on identity broadly, she brings together cases that are rarely discussed in the same breath, such as pregnant women accused of murdering a fetus and lesbians accused of gang rape. A necessary book for anyone interested in abolition, the carceral state, feminism, and queer politics.”—Hugh Ryan, author of The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison “Be prepared to get angry. Pink Crime details the outrageous and staggering number of ways that, even in the twenty-first century, criminalization continues to punish women and queer people who make decisions about their own bodies.”—Victoria Law, author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women “Mothers convicted of harming their children based on junk science. Parents criminalized for seeking gender-affirming care for their trans kids. Pregnant people imprisoned for taking the drugs prescribed to them during their pregnancies. If you can’t imagine a world in which this happens, Valena Beety’s Pink Crime will upend the way that you see the criminal legal system—and give you the tools you need to change that system in your own community.”—Leigh Goodmark, author of Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism “Drawing on years of experience as a defense lawyer, Valena Beety shows how the criminal law shapes and impacts the lives of pregnant people, parenthood, and queer identity. Her compassionate and clear perspective provides a guide to anyone who wants to better understand how individuals are ensnared in a system that harms not only those directly impacted but all of us.”—Aziza Ahmed, author of Risk and Resistance: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS “Incisive and urgently necessary, Pink Crime names and exposes the systemic prosecution of women and queer people for who they are rather than what they’ve done. This... Read more