The rights of women

I have progressive men friends who are great, but sometimes I don’t think they get it. It being what it means to be a woman in the US. A good friend of mine posted this article to Facebook, and I’m going to summarize it and then freak out about what this all means for women as SCOTUS prepares to hear a case on birth control and states systematically attempt to pass fetal personhood.

The article was written by Erik Eckholm for the New York Times. Bode Miller, 36, Olympic ski star, met Sara A McKenna, 27, in San Diego last year through a matchmaker (Kelleher International). Shockingly the relationship didn’t last long, but they did get preggers. Now Miller and McKenna are in a custody battle that spans the country. McKenna is attending Columbia University on the G.I. Bill. However, the real issue being debated right now is the rights of pregnant women to make life choices.

McKenna decided to move to New York to attend college, while seven months pregnant. Miller accused her of fleeing to find a sympathetic court, which a New York judge agreed with, essentially saying McKenna absconded with her fetus. Take a minute. This resulted in a California court to grant custody of the now born boy to Miller. However, last week, a five-judge appeals court in New York said McKenna’s basic rights were violated, adding, “Putative fathers have neither the right nor the ability to restrict a pregnant woman from her constitutional protected liberty.”

The appeals court rule New York has jurisdiction. The custody proceedings in New York could place the nine month old back in McKenna’s custody. However, San Diego hasn’t ceded jurisdiction. There is of course the drama around a celebrity custody case and he said/she said aspects. Both parents wanted shared custody, but they obviously have their personal differences.

I’m less interested in this. I’m interested in the rights of a pregnant woman in this political climate. Sarah E. Burns, head of the Reproductive Justice Clinic at the New York University law school, “Especially with current political pressures to recognize separate legal rights for fetuses, there will be increasing calls on the courts to fault a pregnant woman for moving, to restrain women from living their lives because they’re pregnant.”

Miller filed for custody in California after McKenna moved to New York for school. McKenna filed for temporary custody in New York, but was rebuffed, the court says, “While Ms. McKenna ‘did not ‘abduct’ the child, her appropriation of the child while in utero was irresponsible, reprehensible.’”

The New York appeals court rejected the suggestion, “the mother needed to somehow arrange her relocation with the father with whom she had only a brief romantic relationship.”

See what happened there before New York’s appeals court stepped in? A man decided the woman carrying his child couldn’t leave the state, and because she did he was granted custody. So pregnant women aren’t allowed to move freely around the US now? Riddle me this, does this mean a woman who seeks an abortion without informing her partner could be barred from perusing it? How fair does the prevention of women living their lives go? Because while I don’t plan on ever being pregnant, I would not give up caffeine; I can’t deal with migraines and caffeine helps. Of course, that is on the long list of things pregnant women are supposed to purge from their diet. What is a woman starts a new relationship, but the biological father is violent and doesn’t want her moving on? Can he prevent her relocating with another person?

Women less important than the fetus they carry now in most states including that beacon of liberalism California.

I once had a fight with a guy I went to school with about the obligation of women to inform their partners before seeking an abortion. I argued that women have no such obligation, but in most healthy relationships both partners would be informed and share in the decision making process. However, we don’t live in a world where all relationships are healthy instead, some people use pregnancy as a means to control their partners. He argued his DNA gave him the right to his partner’s body because FETUSES ARE PEOPLE TOO, and more so than the incubators we call women. Feel the privilege, and hear the white man speak.

If the California decision holds this will be one more front women have to defend to keep our rights as human beings other people (men) are free to exercise. A fetus doesn’t make a woman less of a human being.

I took a class years ago where we discussed what it meant to be a citizens and how that changes depending on the context. Who gets to be citizens and what does that look like? Citizenship is more than legal citizenship, and those who reside in a society, but are limited in the “rights” they are able to exercise while not being barred from doing so are not citizens. In the US, I don’t think it looks like woman, person of color, or person of a lower socioeconomic class. Just because they haven’t taken our rights yet doesn’t mean these rights are becoming more and more elusive to us.  To be perfectly honest, this is all very The Handmaid’s Tale to me, which I write cheekily.