Last week, a woman gave birth in a jail cell. Despite repeated requests to see a doctor, guards ignored her. She went through labor delivery alone without any medical help. No, this didn't happen in Afghanistan where the woman was jailed for adultery. It happened in Harris County, TX. It came to the attention of the media because a fellow inmate used her phone call to contact a local TV station.
In recent months, a number of states have jailed pregnant women for pre-natal abuse--because they are using drugs and alcohol. Medical experts think this is the wrong way to handle the problem of substance abusing mothers-to-be because it discourages them from seeking pre-natal care for fear of failing a drug test and going to jail. In several cases, these women have given birth in jail cells, despite repeated requests for medical attention. In one case, the infant developed an infection as a result of coming intot his world in unsanitary conditions.
Women's E-News, a terrific source of news on issues that concern women, relates the horrifying stories here.
http://www.womensenews.org/...
And it's not just women with substance abuse problems who are targeted.
Other women have also been arrested for endangering the fetus by not getting to the hospital quickly enough on the day of delivery and by not following doctor's advice to get bed rest. One woman who suffered a stillbirth was arrested for murder based on the claim that by exercising her right to medical decision-making and postponing a Caesarean section, she caused the death of her child.
Law enforcement officials often justify the application of criminal laws to pregnant women by claiming that the arrest and imprisonment of pregnant women will protect fetuses and advance children's health.
"We have to look at each fact to determine what the right thing is to do to protect the children," Jerry Peace, a South Carolina prosecutor, said recently.
In other words, the fetus comes first.
Am I down-playing the need for pre-natal care and the need to get substance abusing mothers-to-be off drugs and booze? Not at all. It's is better for both if the mothers are clean and sober. But this is NOT the way to do it. And the experts agree with me, not these judges--who actually DO meet the description of "activist judges" in my book. Their actions fly in the face of everything we know to be true.
But every leading medical organization to address this issue--including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Nurse Midwives, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the March of Dimes--has concluded that the problem of alcohol and drug use during pregnancy is a health issue best addressed through education and community-based family treatment, not through the criminal justice system.
As leading public health and child welfare groups have long noted, pregnant women do not experience alcoholism and other drug dependencies because they want to harm their fetuses or because they don't care about their children.
Medical knowledge about addiction and dependency treatment demonstrates that patients do not, and cannot, simply stop their drug use as a result of threats of arrest or other negative consequences. This is one reason why threat-based approaches do not work to stop drug use or to protect children. Such approaches have, in fact, been shown to deter pregnant women not from using drugs but rather from seeking prenatal care and what little drug and alcohol treatment may be available to them.
The excuse is that they are protecting the fetus by keeping the mother away from alcohol and drugs that can cause fetal damage. The problem is, another practice makes it clear that this is about puniushing women for bad behavior, not getting them real help.
Prisons throughout the United States restrain and shackle women throughout pregnancy and during labor, even though international human rights law bans restraints under these circumstances.
Besides being dehumanizing and totally unnecessary for public safety, the use of shackles and handcuffs during pregnancy and childbirth is dangerous to maternal and fetal health.
Pregnant women in their third trimesters may already have balance problems; shackling their legs heightens the risk that a woman will fall, potentially injuring them and their fetuses. Also troubling is that the use of restraints during labor can, according to Amnesty International USA, "compromise the ability to manipulate (the pregnant woman's) legs into the proper position for the necessary treatment."
Furthermore, when doctors need to remove the restraints to provide adequate care--such as performing an emergency Caesarean--it can take five or 10 minutes to locate the keys, unlock the shackles and free the woman's legs. This delay can be the difference between life and death for a woman or her child.
So much for the notion that they are doing this for the good of the baby. Shackles endanger its life and health. This is ALL about PUNISHMENT.
Some of us pro-choice women here have concluded that the current attempts to restrict abortions and access to birth control, to keep Plan B from being sold OTC (they lost that round), and now this jailing of women for the good of the fetus is an attempt on the part of the Right--especially the Religious Right--to make the rights of the women less important than those of the fetus--and to punish women for being Bad Girls (as any unmarried woman who has sex is in their eyes). This current practice makes it dead clear that it's about punishment, not protection--why else insist on shackling women, an action that endangers the life qnd health of the fetus? Why allow them to give birth in dirty cells without medical attention, which certainly endangers the life of the fetus?
It's about Sex, folks. It's about hating women. It's about removing medical decision making and control over their own bodies from the hands of women. Why else arrest a woman for murder merely because she chose NOT to undergo or to delay a C-section--something she legally has the right to do--even if the child is stillborn?
Years ago, in the early 80s, MS. Magazine published a story in which pregnant women were supervised by Pregnancy Police, who monitored their health and the development of their fetus. If they didn't follow doctor's orders completely--one glass of wine was a criminal offense--they could be jailed. . It was science fiction back then, and we all believed it was exaggerated, that it would never happen. And now it is happening all cross the country, and not just in red states.
I think we are now reaching the point where Pregnancy Police are a very real possibility. If they ban abortion by overturning Roe and tossing the issue back into t e laps opf the states, about half of the states have laws banning abortion on the books or plan to ban it. It won't be long before women will be banned from having abortion out of state because laws will make THAT illegal. I guess we'll have to have pee tests every time we cross a state border, and pussy police to make sure every woman who's pregnant when she leaves the states, returns that way. Sure it sounds ridiculous. But so did the notion of jailing pregnant women with substance abuse problems rather than putting them into rehab and court-ordered pre-natal care. So did the idea of shackling women in labor. Until now, when we learn it's not uncommon at all.
We need to put an end to this inhumane and dangerous treatment of pregnant women, before the next step IS the Pregnancy Police, because women are quickly becoming incubators on feet, with their rights and needs subordinated to those of the fetus. The fetus, after all is "innocent" and thus deserves protection, while the substance abusing mothers are doubly sinners: once for having had sex outside of marriage which is how they got pregnant, the second for using drugs and alcohol. It is about sin and hatred of women, not protection of the fetus--and that is how we have to frame this. And frame it we must before they come up with more ways to confine us for our own good and that of our unborn children.
For more information:
http://www.rebeccaproject.org/
http://www.drugpolicy.org/...
http://www.breakchains.org/