Jessica sends on this link: A Missouri judge requires a woman to not have any more children as a condition of her parole. This isn’t the first time that a judge has seen it as his right to strip a woman of her reproductive rights. It underlines our social views of women as not-quite-human vessels who may have their fundamental and civil rights taken away because of their reproductive capacities.
The judge claims that his decision isn’t a moral one, and that he’s trying to “help” her because the fathers of her three children aren’t paying child support, which is causing her financial strain. His idea of “help” is to limit her basic human rights, and coerce her into abortion should she become pregnant (pregnancy doesn’t violate her parole conditions, but childbirth does).
In this country, a woman loses many of her civil rights as soon as she becomes pregnant. A non-pregnant woman can use drugs without facing jail time (buying, selling, possessing, etc is illegal, but being an addict is not); pregnant women who use drugs have been charged with child abuse or with being drug dealers to the unborn (no, I am not making this up). A non-pregnant woman can have her medical wishes carried out through her living will; in many states, living wills don’t apply if a woman is pregnant.
All these issues came up in a phone conference with Lynn Paltrow that I took part in a few weeks ago. Lynn (who I think is just about one of the coolest feminists out there) founded National Advocates for Pregnant Women after working for the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. Her work at the ACLU demonstrated that pregnant women are often ignored in the reproductive rights debate, where resources are disproportionally dedicated to abortion rights (because, of course, abortion rights are disproportionately attacked). But the anti-choice view of abortion — that it’s bad because the woman should not have any say about what happens to her own body and the fetus inside of it, and that the fetus should have greater rights than the pregnant woman — have shifted onto the bodies of pregnant women who intend to give birth. And women who want to prevent pregnancy. And women who want to use science and technology to increase their chances of getting pregnant. And women who want to have sex. In other words, reproductive rights are about almost all of us, and anti-choice politics affect every woman.
Check out more of the work that Lynn and NAPW are doing. They’re also holding a summit in Atlanta to, as it’s titled, “Ensure the Health and Humanity of Pregnant and Birthing Women.” Register now!