On Thursday, January 22, having failed to win a pardon from the El Salvadoran justice system, a young woman won her freedom after a pardon was granted by El Salvador's Parliamentary Assembly, according to
Amnesty International. The young woman, "Guadalupe," has already served seven years of the 30-year jail sentence she received after suffering a miscarriage the state judged to be an abortion.
El Salvador has one of the most draconian abortion laws in the world, criminalizing abortion on all grounds, even when a woman or girls’ life or health is in danger and in cases of rape. Women and girls suspected of having illegal abortions are also often cruelly and deliberately charged with homicide, as in Guadalupe’s case.
And so most Americans can return to our everyday lives feeling that justice has been served and being grateful that America is a bastion of human rights, unlike our sovereign neighbors to the south.
Well, they can do so if they choose to ignore the fact that what happened to Guadalupe in El Salvador happens here on a regular basis. American women, in states both red and blue, have been detained, imprisoned, and even forced to undergo unwanted surgery because they have been guilty of being pregnant. In 2006, Julie B. Ehrlich and Lynn M. Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) wrote:
Pregnant women have been arrested and jailed in South Carolina, New Mexico, Arizona, Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Missouri, North Dakota and New Hampshire, among other states, based on the claim that pregnant women can be considered child abusers even before they have given birth.
Women targeted for these arrests are usually those with untreated drug or alcohol problems.
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.
More below the fold.
Authorities claim that the arrests are made to protect the fetus/embryo from harm that might possibly be done by the pregnant woman if left to her own devices. Since they admittedly have no way to protect a fetus dependent upon a womb, the owner of that womb must be incarcerated to protect the fetus.
See how they work that?
They claim that the state has an interest in protecting the lives of the unborn, wherever those unborn happen to be. According to an amicus brief filed in a Mississippi case by the National Women's Law Center (NWLC):
A pregnant woman in Wyoming was charged with felony child abuse for drinking alcohol, for example, and in Wisconsin, a sixteen-year-old was held in detention throughout her pregnancy based on her tendency ‘to be on the run’ and ‘lack of motivation or ability to seek medical care. Melissa Ann Rowland was charged with murder for refusing to submit to a cesarean section.
The most draconian of these invasions of a woman's privacy and her body have occurred in those states that most fiercely cling to the doctrine of small government. These are states whose citizens are furious at Michelle Obama's display of dictatorial nanny state powers by encouraging children to eat their vegetables.
In Maryland, Kari Parsons was seven months pregnant when a drug test, required under her probation for an earlier shoplifting charge, came back positive. Instead of being released as others are in the same situation, Parsons was sent to jail to protect her unborn fetus. Within three weeks, Parsons delivered her son alone in a jail cell, despite her pleas for help and the pleas of other inmates to the guards:
Instead, guards took her out of a holding area with other inmates--who had helped to time her contractions--and put her in a cell by herself. A few hours later, Parsons gave birth completely alone, without health care or support of any kind. According to press reports, although completely healthy when he was born, Parsons' son soon developed an infection due to the unsanitary conditions of his birth.
A few days before, Parsons had been transported to a local hospital with labor pains in shackles. The shackling of pregnant women is banned by treaty and international law. But, according to
NAPW, who reported this story, there are only two states, Illinois and California, that have laws preventing it.
Under Mississippi law, "depraved heart murder" is an act "eminently dangerous to others...regardless of human life." It was under this "depraved heart murder" that a 16-year-old teen, Rennie Gibbs, was indicted in 2007. She was indicted for murder because she smoked crack while pregnant. Ignoring the fact that the teen's stillborn baby had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, the medical examiner found traces of a cocaine byproduct in the blood of the teen and her child, and declared the death a homicide, caused by "cocaine toxicity."
This in spite of the fact that there is no scientific evidence that shows that trace amounts of benzoylecgonine, a cocaine byproduct, (no cocaine was found in the blood of the mother or child) could cause a stillbirth. The case is even more disturbing when it comes to the questionable abilities of the medical examiner of Mississippi, Steven Hayne. Radley Balko has written about him here.
Last spring the county circuit court judge dismissed the murder charge against Rennie Gibbs, citing an earlier case (Buckhalter v. State) that said the law was unclear as to the correct charge. The assistant district attorney has indicated that he will "most likely re-present the case to the grand jury."
In Alabama, a state not known for budget surpluses, a law was passed last year that allows the state to provide legal counsel for a fetus whenever a minor appeals to a court for an abortion. That fetus can then call witnesses against its incubator and even appeal the court's decision should the court allow the minor access to an abortion. I'm not sure how a fetus is made aware that it will not likely win such an appeal, but perhaps it figures the delay will change the status of the host. Who will no doubt love it and treat it kindly, once it has forced itself into residence. Or at least that is probably what its lawyer is telling it.
How far down the rabbit hole does one have to go to make sense of the indefensible?
According to the ACLU:
The judicial bypass already creates additional and somewhat daunting steps for a minor seeking an abortion. But Alabama's law goes beyond any other state's process judicial bypass by allowing the district attorney, the guardian appointed to represent the fetus, or the teen's parents to call witness to testify against the teen. The teen's teacher, employer, pastor, boyfriend, neighbor, and friends could all be notified of her pregnancy and called to testify against her. Additionally, the law allows the district attorney, guardian or the minor's parents to file an appeal if the bypass is granted, potentially dragging out the process for so long that the teen can no longer get the abortion she needs.
In Tennessee last month, a woman was incarcerated two days after giving birth under a new law that allows the state to charge a woman with criminal assault for using narcotics during her pregnancy. The woman and her newborn tested positive for amphetamine, which is not a narcotic. In reporting on Mallory Loyolla,
Salon points out that Tennessee is one of the states that rejected Medicaid expansion, leaving many women unable to find addiction treatment during pregnancy:
According to data compiled by Healthy and Free Tennessee, only two of the state’s 177 addiction treatment facilities that provide on-site prenatal care allow older children to stay with their mothers while they are undergoing drug treatment. Only 19 of these facilities offer any addiction care specifically oriented toward pregnant women. But rather than listen to demands from people and organizations across the state to expand access to care, lawmakers acted to criminalize pregnant women and new mothers.
Tennessee is continuing its forceful march into the past with a host of new forced birth regulations for 2015, including the ever-popular ultrasound, forced counseling, and the familiar ambulatory surgery clinic requirements, reports
RH Reality Check.
Women are being forced to accept cesarean sections by hospitals, supported by judges.
In Florida, as recently as last summer:
Jennifer Goodall of Coral Gables was informed in a July 10 letter from the chief financial officer of Bayfront Health Port Charlotte that because she decided to attempt vaginal delivery before agreeing to cesarean surgery in her fourth pregnancy, her prenatal care providers intended to report her to the Department of Children and Family Services, seek a court order to perform surgery, and perform cesarean surgery on her “with or without [her] consent” if she came to the hospital.
The rate of cesarean surgery for the delivery of a child is 30 percent in the United States, which greatly exceeds the normal rate of 5 to 10 percent, according to the World Health Organization. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists agrees with the WHO that the routine use of C-sections is too high.
Jennifer Goodall was willing to have a C-section if required, but wanted to attempt a vaginal birth first. Because she had had C-sections in the past, the hospital not only refused to allow the attempt at a vaginal delivery, they got a judge to agree with them. Fortunately, Goodall found another hospital willing to let her make the attempt prior to proceeding with what turned out to be a necessary cesarean. She and her son both survived and are doing fine.
Other women who have been forced to undergo cesarean surgery against their will have not been so lucky, including a 27-year-old woman in Washington, DC. A judge ordered her to undergo the procedure, which cost her life as well as the life of her 26-week-old fetus.
The Staten Island University Hospital forced a woman to endure a C-section in spite of her explicit objections to the procedure. She is now suing the hospital and the physician who punctured her bladder during the surgery. Think about it. She was fully informed, decided she did not want the risk, was judged capable of making that decision by her doctor who then decided she should have it anyway and so proceeded without a court order. Apparently a physician only has to honor the informed consent laws if he agrees with a patient's decision.
In Indiana, a woman is currently on trial for feticide and neglect of a dependent, which carry sentences of 20 and 50 years, respectively. Purvi Patel, 33, delivered what she claimed was a stillborn child. The dead baby was recovered from a dumpster and a pathologist decided that the baby had taken a breath after birth. The state is accusing Patel of feticide and neglect of a dependent ,which makes no sense. If she killed a fetus, it was never a dependent who could be neglected. If she neglected a dependent, she could not have killed a fetus.
No matter—the jury was selected last Thursday and the state is proceeding to trial.
Patel is not the first Indiana woman charged with feticide for losing a baby. In 2011 Bei Bei Shuai was arrested after she attempted suicide while pregnant. Although attempting suicide is not illegal in Indiana, and, according to an Obstetrics & Gynecology study done in 2010, it is the fifth leading cause of death for pregnant women, Shuai faced 45 to 65 years in prison for murder and attempted feticide. She had already spent a year in prison before pleading guilty to criminal recklessness in August 2013.
What these actions all have in common is the desire to establish a legal entity that can only survive inside of another person's body while still enjoying the full rights of an American citizen. Including the right not to be aborted. This is the forced birthers end run around Roe v. Wade.
They started back in the '90s with laws that, on their surface, appeared to protect women by charging anyone who killed a pregnant woman with the death of the fetus as well as the woman. It was supposed to protect women from domestic violence—at least that was the claim of the proponents of the measures. Although the thought of being charged for two murders instead of one would appear to be no more a deterrent than a death sentence, they were able to use the argument to get the bills passed in states all around the country.
The California fetal homicide law certainly did not stop Scott Peterson from killing his wife, Laci, and her full-term unborn child in 2002. The federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act that was signed into law by George Bush in 2004 also carried the alternate name of the Laci and Connor's Law, in honor of Laci Peterson and her unborn son, Connor.
These bills are now being used against the pregnant women they were supposed to protect.
Of course, in the real world, protection of pregnant women was never the intent of the forced birthers. Never has been. Their intent has always been to subvert the rights of women, to keep them out of the work force and in a second-class status. And the way to do that was to establish a "personhood" at conception doctrine. And no matter how many times the voters reject their arguments—which they have done every time personhood legislation has ever appeared on a ballot—they persist, using lies and subterfuge to regulate the wombs of others.
In furtherance of this objective, an attempt is being made to prove that a fertilized egg should be granted full citizenship rights because one can survive outside of a woman's womb for two to six days and is therefore "viable" under Roe v Wade. This of course, would push fetal viability to conception. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, considered one of the least friendly to women's rights, heard oral arguments last week.
Fighting back on behalf of women, in addition to the NWLC, the ACLU and others is:
National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), established as a 501(c)(3) organization in 2001, works to secure the human and civil rights, health and welfare of all women, focusing particularly on pregnant and parenting women, and those who are most vulnerable to state control and punishment - low income women, women of color, and drug-using women.
Publishing news and analysis on sexual and reproductive health and justice issues is
RH Reality Check:
RH Reality Check is guided by the issues and recommendations identified in the Program of Action agreed on at the International Conference on Population and Development at Cairo in 1994. Protection is our watchword—we are contributing to the global effort to empower people with the information, services and leadership they need to safeguard their sexual and reproductive health and rights against false attacks and misinformation.
RH Reality Check exists as a resource for evidence-based news, provocative commentary, in-depth analysis and interactive dialogue. We enjoyed the support of the UN Foundation and the editorial independence entrusted to us for six years, from 2006-2012. In January 2012 we officially became our own independent 501c3 non-for-profit organization.