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.

New Study shows the realities of forced pregnancy in the US

Lynn Paltrow, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, and Jeanne Flayin, Professor of Sociology Fordham University, published  their new study in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law entitled, “Arrests of and Forced Interventions of Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973-2005: Implications for Women’s Legal Status and Public Health.” Paltrow and Flayin wrote about their article for RH Reality Check, which I highly recommend you read. The study finds that the post-Roe anti-choice and “pro-life” measures are being used to do more than limit access to abortion. They are providing a basis for arresting women, imprisoning them, and forcing them to submit to medical interventions. Pregnant women face attacks on just about every right associated with constitutional personhood, including physical liberty.

The study identified 413 criminal and civil cases that involved arrests, detentions, and equivalent deprivations of pregnant women’s physical liberty that occurred between 1973 and 2005. So immediately after Roe to 2005. It is a substantial undercount because many cases are not reported publically. New data collection suggests that 250 interventions have taken place since 2005.

They found that in all of the cases, the arrests and other actions were the consequence of the woman’s pregnancy at the time of the alleged violation of the law. Also, in almost every case the person who initiated the action had no direct legal authority to do so (anyone feel like Cartman saying “Respect my authority?"). It is important to note that no state has passed a law that holds women legally liable for the outcome of her pregnancies. No state has passed a law criminalizing a woman carrying her pregnancy to term in spite of a drug addiction. No state has passed a law exempting pregnant women from state and federal constitutional protections. Finally, Roe v. Wade stands.

With the passage of numerous measures and laws restricting access to safe abortion care encourage state actors to treat eggs, embryos, and fetuses as though they are legally separated from pregnant women. Paltrow and Flayin have found these laws are used as the basis for a range of punitive state actions across the country and against women of every race. However, a disproportionally high number of these target low-income African American women in the South.

They found women who were arrested while still pregnant, taken from the hospital in handcuffs, and sometimes shackled around the waist and ankles. They were held under house arrest and incarcerated. Pregnant women were locked in psych wards, in hospitals, and in drug treatment programs under 24-hour guard. They have been forced to undergo medical exams and blood transfusions over religious objections. They have been forced to undergo cesarean surgery. They have been arrested immediately after birth. Some anti-choice activists claim that women will not be arrested if abortion is re-criminalized, but this study found that women already are being arrested.

This is a list of instances mentioned by Paltrow and Flayin:

• “A woman in Utah gave birth to twins. When one was stillborn, she was arrested and charged with criminal homicide based on the claim that her decision to delay cesarean surgery was the case of the stillbirth.
• After a hearing that lasted less than a day, a court issued an order requiring a critically-ill pregnant woman in Washington, DC to undergo cesarean surgery over her objections. Neither she nor her baby survived.
• A judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her from having an abortion.
• A woman in Oregon who did not comply with a doctor’s recommendation to have additional testing for gestational diabetes was subjected to involuntary commitment. During her detention, the additional testing was never performed.
• A Louisiana woman was charged with murder and spent approximately a year in jail before her counsel was able to show that what was deemed a murder of a fetus or a newborn was actually a miscarriage that resulted from medication given to her by a health care provider.
• In Texas, a pregnant woman who sometimes smoked marijuana to ease nausea and boost her appetite gave birth to healthy twins. She was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance to a minor.
• A doctor in Wisconsin had concerns about a woman’s plans to have her birth attended by a midwife. As a result, a civil court order of protection custody for the woman’s fetus was obtained. The order authorized the sheriff’s department to take the woman into custody, transport her to a hospital, and subject her to involuntary testing and medical treatment.”

The researchers believe this study shows the importance of rights in the abortion debate, and not just the right to end a pregnancy, but the consequences of “personhood” measures:

• Provide the basis for arresting pregnant women who have abortions, and
• Provide state actors with the authority to subject all pregnant women to surveillance, arrest, incarceration, and other deprivations of liberty whether seeking to end a pregnancy or not.

Additionally, “the study found that there is no way to include fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses to the state constitutions or to the Unites States Constitution without removing all pregnant women from the community of constitution persons.” These laws attempt to establish separate but equal, which fails, and more often punished low-income and African American women.

The researchers are optimistic that most Americans, regardless of their feelings on abortion, do not want pregnant women to be treated in such a way.

They recommend the following:

• “The rejection of “personhood” measures.
• A moratorium on new feticide laws and a fair and open inquiry into whether such laws—passed with the promise of protecting pregnant women and fetuses—have actually reduced violence against pregnant women or rather increased legal surveillance of women.
• That health care providers ensure that pregnant women are afforded the same confidentiality, respect, and dignity extended to other patients.
• That lawmakers adopt policies that promote women’s health and remove barriers to family planning and contraceptive services, abortion services, birthing options, and effective and humane drug treatment, and address the stark racial and economic inequalities that are perpetuated by the United States war on drugs and our system of mass incarceration.”

They conclude their article asking legislatures to affirm the personhood of pregnant women through all states of pregnancy, labor, and delivery. You know essentially, stating women are people. “Personhood” for everyone, but women. One of the many reasons these laws are crazy.

Ireland ready to concede women are living people and not just breeders

Ireland is getting ready to allow abortion in certain cases where the mother’s life is in danger. So they are really, really, sorry for killing a woman for the sake of a dying fetus, and would love if the rest of the world would forget about it already. Jezebel has a piece written by Katie J.M. Baker on the whole thing.

Dr. James Reilly, the Irish health minister told The Telegraph, “…we will clarify in legislation and regulation what is available by way of treatment to a woman when a pregnancy gives rise to a threat to a woman’s life. We also will clarify what is legal for the professionals who must provide that care while at all times taking full account of the equal rights to life of the unborn child.”

Apparently, the Supreme Court rule that abortions were ok when the woman’s life was at risk back in 1992, but the government never got around to creating a law to that effect. Digest that for a moment. So now they are repealing legislation that makes abortion a criminal act and instituting regulations for when a mother’s life is at risk. The new law will comply with the Supreme Court decision and the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights from two years ago. Yeah, so there were at least two court decisions Ireland never bothered to get behind.

Risk of suicide also counts as danger to the mother, which is mind blowing because a woman in Indiana was arrest for trying to kill herself when she was pregnant citing that she tried to kill her unborn child. Wrap your mind around that. In Ireland, the Supreme Court decisions 20 years ago overturned an injunction that prevented a 14 year old girl from having an abortion in Britain. The girl was suicidal after being raped and then prevented from obtaining an abortion. But this just confused everyone and no legislation was drafted.

The Catholics are in a tizzy that the government would legalize some abortions even though they were supposed to 20 years ago. Catholic Cardinal Sean Brady and the archbishops of Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam said: “The unavoidable choice that now faces all out public representatives is: will I choose to defend and vindicate the equal right to life of a mother and the child in her womb in all circumstances, or will I choose to license the direct and intentional killing of the innocent baby in the womb?”

So, politicians may make it ok for limited reproductive choice, but remember the women are second to their unborn children. Innocence prevails over the guilty. Ironically, the Catholics believe we are born into sin with Original Sin so I’m confused. If a pregnant woman receives reconciliation and then aborts the fetus wouldn’t she be without sin or of lesser sin than the fetus? Then she could be forgiven again. I think I’m onto something here. This is how sex abuse works in the church, right?

The bishop of Kilmore Leo O’Reilly was a bit more dramatic claiming the slippery slope argument, “to a culture of death.” When it is the woman it is ok though. Naturally, some politicians (the Fine Gael Party specifically) are worried about the suicide clause. Because you know, the women folk will threaten suicide to have abortions.

I don’t suppose we could treat women like people who are valuable as people instead of just breeders? In 2012, why are we just now allowing women to obtain abortions when their lives are at risk? How do they not have a rape exemption? It will be a cold day in hell before a pregnant me goes to Ireland.