Women are being sent to jail over abortion issues. Consider the case of the woman who tried to procure "Morning After" pills for her daughter:*
In Pennsylvania, a woman has been sentenced to a year and a half behind bars for illegally procuring so-called “morning after” pills on the Internet for her 16-year-old daughter, who had an unwanted pregnancy. The mother had no health insurance, and there was no clinic nearby for the girl to obtain an abortion. (And if states like Texas end up getting their way, there will be lots of places where women’s health clinics will be shut down from over-regulation.) The mother is a single parent. One can only imagine how desperate both the mother and the daughter were.
But there was no acknowledgement of how awful it must have been for the mother to have to seek reproductive and abortion care for her daughter. Instead, the woman is suffering exactly the fate people said was just an hysterical conspiracy theory. She’s been named a criminal, convicted of performing an illegal abortion and is going to prison. The fact that the teenager will be without a mother for a year and a half doesn’t seem to trouble those who went after her, either.
Or consider the case of the Iowa woman who was only thinking about abortion"**"Ms. Taylor became light-headed and fell down a flight of stairs in her home. Paramedics rushed to the scene and ultimately declared her healthy. However, since she was pregnant with her third child at the time, Taylor thought it would be best to be seen at the local ER to make sure her fetus was unharmed.
That's when things got really bad and really crazy. Alone, distraught, and frightened, Taylor confided in the nurse treating her that she hadn't always been sure she'd wanted this baby, now that she was single and unemployed. She'd considered both adoption and abortion before ultimately deciding to keep the child. The nurse then summoned a doctor, who questioned her further about her thoughts on ending the pregnancy. Next thing Taylor knew, she was being arrested for attempted feticide. Apparently the nurse and doctor thought that Taylor threw herself down the stairs on purpose."
And the trend is growing. consider Colorado that recently had a vote on personhood (that failed this time):
This fall, the people of Colorado will have the opportunity to vote onAmendment 67. Though the measure’s proponents are marketing it as a way of bringing justice to a woman and the fetus she lost after a collision with a drunk driver, Amendment 67 is not a law designed to protect pregnant women. Rather, it is a total overhaul of Colorado’s criminal code that would give law enforcement officials grounds to potentially arrest, prosecute, convict, and imprison women and mothers. ***
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This is not true. Well-documented research shows that hundreds of women in a number of states have been arrested, detained, or forced to undergo medical procedures based on the legal principle that Amendment 67 would establish if enacted. Moreover, the women targeted for these arrests have overwhelmingly been low-income mothers and mothers of color.***
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Once the word “child” is redefined to include the unborn, no further legislation is necessary before criminal laws become applicable to pregnant women. For example, in South Carolina, a decision that the word “child” in the state’s criminal code included viable fetuses was enough toimmediately apply criminal laws to pregnant women, including those who used drugs or experienced stillbirths.
Similarly, the Alabama Supreme Court recently decided that the word “child” includes the unborn from the moment of fertilization in their state constitution. Using this new and expanded definition of the word “child,” research from National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found that more than 130 women have been arrested under the chemical endangerment of “children” law, passed in 2006 to penalize adults who take juveniles to dangerous places like methamphetamine labs. However, prosecutors have since used it to punish women who used marijuana or another controlled substance while pregnant, even when they gave birth to healthy babies—which has been in the majority of cases.***
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According to a Personhood USA press release, this Alabama decision—which makes it possible to sentence mothers to lengthy prison terms away from their children—is a “monumental victory.
The Christian religious right wants to define "personhood" as beginning with fertilization of the egg; however, pregnancy really only begins when the egg adheres to the womb wall and can take 10 or 12 days to do so. Pills like the morning after pill interrupt this adhering process.
Women better watch out or they will lose control of their lives. Will we eventually regress to the "good old days" when women couldn't vote or, even earlier, not own property? My allegiances are to the born, i.e. a baby is out of the womb and has taken a breath on its own.
* http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/susan-milligan/2014/09/08/pennsylvania-women-sent-to-jail-over-abortion-and-morning-after-pills
** http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/14/956120/-Iowa-Woman-Jailed-for-Thinking-about-an-Abortion
*** http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/10/07/keep-mothers-jail-vote-colorados-personhood-measure/
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