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xchrom

(108,903 posts) Sun Jan 27, 2013, 07:20 AM Jan 2013

Is miscarriage murder? States that put fetal rights ahead of a mother's say so

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/25/miscarriage-murder-roevwade-personhood

Several states have pursued murder charges for women who have miscarried. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Back in 1872, just after she was arrested for casting an illegal vote, Susan B Anthony gave a rousing speech in which she posed the question of whether women are actually persons. Her point, of course, was that if women were indeed flesh and blood persons, then there could be no legal basis under the constitution to deny them a vote. It took nearly 50 more years – women finally achieved suffrage in 1920 – to get a definitive answer to what was a rhetorical question.

Now, however, less than 100 years after that long-delayed answer, the question of whether women – or at least, pregnant women – are still persons endowed with all the human, civil, and constitutional rights that personhood bestows, is once again in play. And the evidence suggests that the answer is, at best, a "maybe".

This week, just in time for the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) released a study (pdf) on the "criminalization of pregnancy", as reported last week by the Guardian's Karen McVeigh. It details hundreds of cases of women who were arrested, forced to undergo medical procedures, and held in jails, prisons, or mental institutions.

These arrests and detentions were made possible by the relentless quest to undo Roe v Wade and restrict access to legal abortions. But there is a bigger issue, according to NAPW's executive director Lynn Paltrow:

"We are no longer just talking about [attacks on] reproductive rights, but whether, in the guise of trying to end just abortion rights, we are going to remove pregnant women from the community of constitutional persons."