Podcast recap: “Forensics and Abortion” with Equal Rights Institute
Josh Brahm of Equal Rights Institute invited me to record several podcast episodes with him. In this episode he interviewed me about my educational and professional background in forensics, and how those exeperiences impact my perspectives on the abortion debate, especially regarding the idea of subjecting women who abort to prosecution. You can watch/listen to the full episode here or read the summary below.
Key Takeaways
- Forensic science is powerful but not unlimited. The “CSI effect” gives the public an unrealistic belief in clear-cut answers that rarely exist.
- Miscarriage and abortion by pill are forensically indistinguishable. There is currently no test for abortion pills in a routine medical setting.
- The justice system is an important endeavor but carries significant flaws, and we should be realistic and humble about how we implement it.
Summary
In this convo Josh interviews me about my education and experience in forensics, and how that background has shaped the way I think about abortion laws, especially proposals to subject women who get abortions to criminal prosecution. We talked about the CSI Effect, which is the idea that the general public (including members of a jury) misunderstand the complexity and abilities of forensic science based partly on popular TV shows like CSI. In reality forensics is often slow, inconclusive, and limited by lack of resources and human fallibility.
I talk about how I first began considering a career in forensics when I was an undergrad at Berkeley, after reading about the Innocence Project. Years later, I worked for a private California forensics lab that served clients from all sides of the justice system: prosecution cases, defense cases, cold cases, and Innocence Project cases. This variety of experiences kept us objective and aware of the real limitations of the justice system.
Josh and I talk about how of course there must be a justice system, even though it will never be error-free, but we should see it as a tool to use humbly and cautiously, and always strive to reduce the error rate. We considered the differences between guilt, legal innocence, and actual innocence, and how the justice system attempts to determine those differences.
We went into some detail about leading causes of wrongful convictions, notably including the kinds of psychological and cultural pressures that can make scientists, attorneys, and law enforcement (like any humans) susceptible to biases and mistakes. These concerns deepen when we look at how the general public reacts to upsetting crime stories with insufficient information.
We also discussed closed systems and finite resources, and how forensic labs try to triage when they have more cases than they can process, using the rape kit backlog as a prime example.
I explained to Josh that when people talk about potentially attaching criminal penalties to abortion laws for women who abort, my mind goes to the forensic realities of such a step. Most importantly, I think about the fact that miscarriage and abortion via pills (currently the vast majority of abortions) look exactly the same. At this time there is no scalable or validated way to test for the presence of abortion pills, which leaves some uneasy questions about how law enforcement would distinguish loss parents mourning a wanted child from potential criminal activity.
There are other reasons I oppose criminal penalties for women who abort, but my background in forensics is a major factor.
If you’re interested in the abortion debate, forensics, or the criminal justice system, I think you’ll find this episode particularly engaging. If you do listen to it and have feedback, please tell us here.
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