Cold Case Pregnancy Criminalization: How Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy is Used to Prosecute Mothers for Decades-Old Stillbirths
Introduction
The rise of commercial DNA testing has created a new pathway for policing through Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (“FIGG”), with a perhaps unintended consequence of facilitating prosecutions for pregnancy loss. One use of FIGG that has not been widely reported on is the “Baby Doe” investigations, which involve extracting DNA from the remains of an unidentified perinate, discovered sometimes decades ago, to identify the perinate’s parents. Once named, many of those parents—the vast majority mothers—are investigated, interrogated, prosecuted, and convicted of homicide, even when these women maintain that, decades ago, they tragically, but legally, delivered a stillborn fetus and chose to keep that pregnancy loss private. These pregnancy loss prosecutions depend on unreliable science to convict women, are infected by tunnel vision and gender-based biases from the investigators and community at large, and have frightening implications for abortion and the criminalization of other pregnancy loss in the future. However, unlike many other tools of policing, FIGG is uniquely vulnerable to the pressures of the public, and visible outrage against this practice has potential to stop its use.