The New York Times has an article out bemoaning the outcome of this last election and what the increased numbers of Republicans in public office will mean for women in this country.
In the article it lists some of the most egregious results from the passage of "personhood" amendments around the country, and how it has turned innocent women into convicted criminals.
Take a look:
In Iowa, a pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs was reported to the police after seeking help at a hospital. She was arrested for “attempted fetal homicide.”
In Utah, a woman gave birth to twins; one was stillborn. Health care providers believed that the stillbirth was the result of the woman’s decision to delay having a cesarean. She was arrested on charges of fetal homicide.
In Louisiana, a woman who went to the hospital for unexplained vaginal bleeding was locked up for over a year on charges of second-degree murder before medical records revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at 11 to 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Florida has had a number of such cases. In one, a woman was held prisoner at a hospital to prevent her from going home while she appeared to be experiencing a miscarriage. She was forced to undergo a cesarean. Neither the detention nor the surgery prevented the pregnancy loss, but they did keep this mother from caring for her two small children at home. While a state court later found the detention unlawful, the opinion suggested that if the hospital had taken her prisoner later in her pregnancy, its actions might have been permissible.
In another case, a woman who had been in labor at home was picked up by a sheriff, strapped down in the back of an ambulance, taken to a hospital, and forced to have a cesarean she did not want. When this mother later protested what had happened, a court concluded that the woman’s personal constitutional rights “clearly did not outweigh the interests of the State of Florida in preserving the life of the unborn child.”
Anti-abortion reasoning has also provided the justification for arresting pregnant women who experience depression and have attempted suicide. A 22-year-old in South Carolina who was eight months pregnant attempted suicide by jumping out a window. She survived despite suffering severe injuries. Because she lost the pregnancy, she was arrested and jailed for the crime of homicide by child abuse.
These are not isolated or rare cases. Last year, we published a peer-reviewed study documenting 413 arrests or equivalent actions depriving pregnant women of their physical liberty during the 32 years between 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided, and 2005. In a majority of these cases, women who had no intention of ending a pregnancy went to term and gave birth to a healthy baby. This includes the many cases where the pregnant woman was alleged to have used some amount of alcohol or a criminalized drug.
I found myself shocked that these are stories of what is happening to women right here in America.
So tell me again that there is no war on women.
There was a time when I thought there was a limit to how far conservatives would go to turn women back into breeding stock and take away their rights as equal human beings altogether.
I am no longer under any such illusions. If the Republicans not stopped there may well come a time when women in this country are considered human beings, with all the same rights as men, ONLY up until they have a fertilized egg within their womb. And after that they will be relegated to a human incubator and the rights of the zygote growing inside of them will supersede any rights they may have enjoyed before becoming impregnated.
Once again let express my dismay that any woman in this country votes Republican. It is like a cow giving a positive Yelp review to a slaughterhouse.
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