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.
