Imprisoned for Miscarriage: A Young Mexican Woman Gets 23 Years for Losing Her Baby

[ismnotwasm]

Imprisoned for Miscarriage: A Young Mexican Woman Gets 23 Years for Losing Her Baby and Advocates Call for Help

The Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network (LACWHN or Red de Salud in Spanish) is calling for solidarity in support of a 21-year-old Baja California (Mexico) woman sentenced to 23 years in prison for losing her baby. Red de Salud is a regional network of women’s health and rights organizations in existence since the mid-eighties.

In what Red de Salud calls “a serious case of discrimination and violence against women,” the young woman was sentenced to serve a prison sentence of 23 years for the crime of aggravated homicide (specifically, parricide) for what the accused says was a miscarriage in 2008.

This is the direct result of laws that claim to “protect life from the moment of conception,” or “personhood laws” as they are known in the United States. These laws establish rights of personhood for fertilized eggs that trump the health and rights of women.

Red de Salud reports that:

On December 26, 2008, amendments to the Constitution of the State of Baja California were adopted to protect life from the moment of conception, similar to reforms promoted in 15 states throughout the Republic. Thanks to such acts of dogmatism and ignorance, contrary to the principle of equality and fundamental rights in general, authorities from three states so far have sought to imprison women who have made decisions with regard to their bodies, exercising their rights to equality and freedom from discrimination and their sexual and reproductive rights.

- See more at: http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/01/imprisoned-miscarriageyoung-woman-gets-years-losing-baby/#sthash.a6P10sTw.dpuf

[SheilaT]

1. When I see stuff like this I think that the very best thing would be to

castrate all men a puberty.

News flash: women do not get pregnant without the assistance of some male.

I recognize that a miscarriage can easily happen without a guy's help, but . . . . well you can guess where I'm headed.

Okay, I really am not that man-hating.

But I also recommend the book Unwind by Neal Shusterman. In a near future USA, life is protected from conception to age 13. Then, from 13 to 18 it's possible to retroactively "abort" an unwanted child, although it's done through a process called "unwinding" which salvages every single part of the body for other use. Creepy and very good.

One interesting side note, not particularly developped in the novel, is that as a consequence of the unwinding, a lot of medical research has fallen completely by the wayside, as spare parts are readily available. Hearts, lungs, livers, etc. There's been a complete loss of other kinds of cures or treatments. That's a very, very small part of the book, but caught my attention.

Where birth control is forbidden, and abortions are not possible, you get situations like Romania under Ceausescu, where thousands of unwanted babies were abandoned to government warehouses, I mean orphanages.

Miscarriages happen. So do abortions, despite the rhetoric of the anti-choice people in this country who would have you believe that almost no one ever had one before Roe v. Wade.

[BainsBane]

2. You should edit that

We have a lot of lurkers who like to read HOF and send alerts.

[SheilaT]

5. No. Because the complete text is what matters.

I appreciate your concern, but if the post is alerted, I'm confident it will stay.

I have been alerted any number of times, had posts deleted that *I* didn't think should be deleted, but that's how the jury system works.

[BainsBane]

3. This is exactly what the Republicans want for America

[gopiscrap]

4. that's the kind of fucked up shit the red neck christo-fascist freaks want to

force down our throats in the US

[ismnotwasm]

7. Exactly

And I never think it 'couldn't happen' here.

[SamReynolds]

6. One tragedy compounded by another, horrific assault.

So many of our laws are simply barbaric. Only when we decide, as a race, that understanding should come before action will we take those first steps to enlightenment.

My heart goes out to this poor young woman.