Pregnant, and No Civil Rights
With the success of Republicans in the midterm elections and the passage of Tennessee’s anti-abortion amendment, we can expect ongoing efforts to ban abortion and advance the “personhood” rights of fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses.
But it is not just those who support abortion rights who have reason to worry. Anti-abortion measures pose a risk to all pregnant women, including those who want to be pregnant.
Such laws are increasingly being used as the basis for arresting women who have no intention of ending a pregnancy and for preventing women from making their own
decisions about how they will give birth.
This article goes on to discuss cases in Iowa, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, Utah and Mississippi and to cite stats of hundreds of cases each year of women being arrested for being pregnant and arousing suspicion about their behavior, the Salem Witch Hunts of the 21st Century -- courtesy of Republicans.
This article was co-authored by Lynn M. Paltrow, lawyer and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, and Jeanne Flavin, a sociology professor at Fordham University. More about NAPW below the fold.
National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) seeks to protect the rights and human dignity of all women, particularly pregnant and parenting women and those who are most vulnerable including low income women, women of color, and drug-using women. NAPW uses the lessons learned from the experiences of these women to find more effective ways of advancing reproductive and human rights for all women and families. Our work encompasses legal advocacy; local and national organizing; public policy development, and public education. NAPW is actively involved in ongoing court challenges to punitive reproductive health and drug policies and provides litigation support in cases across the country. NAPW engages in local and national organizing and public education efforts among the diverse communities that are stakeholders in these issues, including the women and families directly affected by punitive policies, as well as public health and policy leaders.
By focusing on the rights of all pregnant women, whether they seek to have an abortion or go to term , NAPW is broadening and strengthening the Reproductive Justice and other progressive movements. NAPW recognizes that 61% of women who have abortions are already mothers and 84% of women by the time they are in their 40's have become pregnant and given birth. We believe that you cannot have a culture of life if you do not value the women who give that life.
Check these folks out.
Meanwhile, the war is on.