This kind of crap must not be allowed to continue:
Alabama officials are currently seeking to prevent a pregnant prison inmate from obtaining a legal abortion by stripping her of her parental rights, in a case where a lawyer has been appointed to represent the interests of her fetus.
An unnamed woman, who is referred to in court documents only as Jane Doe, is asking for permission to travel to Huntsville to end her pregnancy. She says she was unable to get an abortion before she was taken into custody and is now feeling desperate. “I am very distraught, and do not want to be forced to carry this pregnancy to term,” she wrote.
Jane Doe — who has to get permission from the court to be transported to the nearest clinic because prison officials consider abortion to be a non-emergency procedure — is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which argues that it would be “cruel and unusual punishment” for the state of Alabama to deny her constitutional right to abortion.
"Jane Doe" is thankfully being represented by the ACLU. Huffington Post talked with Randall Marshall who is the legal director of the ACLU in Alabama:
"It’s clear that Jane Doe has a constitutional right to make her own decision with regards to her pregnancy," Marshall said. "This ploy to attempt to terminate her right through the appointment of a guardian for the fetus, in our view, can’t trump federal law."
Marshall noted the unique quality of the proceedings, in which the state is attempting to force Doe to carry the pregnancy to term after her parental rights are terminated. Since 2006, the chemical endangerment law has led to the arrest of more than 100 pregnant Alabama women who tested positive for a controlled substance, but this appears to be the first case of the state using the law to prevent an incarcerated woman's abortion.
"It appears to me that what the state is attempting to do is turn Jane Doe into a vessel, and control every aspect of her life, forcing her to give birth to a baby, which she has decided she does not want to do," Marshall told HuffPost. "The case has certainly moved to this new dimension, but welcome to Alabama."
Hopefully the ACLU will be able to stop this in time but it's really frightening to think this kind of thing is happening in 2015.
Update: Jane Doe has decided to have the baby
FLORENCE, Ala. — A lawsuit brought by a pregnant Alabama inmate seeking access to an abortion was dismissed by a federal judge on Friday after the woman said she had changed her mind and would carry the child.
The action essentially ended a legal clash that had seen the woman go to federal court to assert her right to an abortion, and the county’s district attorney go to an Alabama court to strip the woman of her parental rights over the fetus to block the abortion.
The woman, 29, who has been identified in court documents only as “Jane Doe,” was arrested this summer after a judge revoked her bond in a pending drug case. State court documents said she had acknowledged using methamphetamine and Adderall while pregnant, and she was charged with chemical endangerment of a child.
She's going to go to drug rehab during her pregnancy. The sheriff said their policy is not changing so I suspect this issue will come up again. Good for her but I really hope this is what she wants and she was not pressured in any way by representatives of the fetus.
Thanks for reading