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Good News

Jill

Female inmates in Missouri don’t give up all of their rights to sexual privacy when they enter prison.

Missouri inmates have the right to obtain elective abortions, a federal appeals court said Tuesday.

The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It throws out a policy by Gov. Matt Blunt’s administration and the Missouri Department of Corrections that restricted an inmate’s access to abortion.

Thomas M. Blumenthal, the St. Louis lawyer who brought the suit on behalf of an anonymous “Jane Roe” inmate, applauded the decision.

“This (abortion) is not a right that is lost at the jailhouse door,” he said.

3 thoughts on Good News

  1. Fantastic news!

    Abortion rights for prisoners is one of those issues that lies at so many intersections of oppression that I’m always happily shocked when we have a victory. I also think it’s depressing that it takes a judge’s ruling to establish that “pregnant inmates probably would take more trips out of the prison for prenatal care”. That should be self-evident.

  3. well, the next thing that is needed is actual enforcement of the right to an abortion–and maybe some watchdog group that can be witness to whether it’s happening or not. here in washington state, we’re regarded as pretty liberal, yet what i hear from my clients is that abortion access is muddied to the point of being almost useless. one client in particular was violently opposed to carrying the pregnancy, and had already scheduled her appointment when she was then jailed. her access was thwarted at every turn (at one point they refused because they stated there was a problem with her med coupon not allowing it) until she was finally released, at nine months pregnant.

    the fallout policy from this is potentially wide-reaching. the reservation i live on jails pregnant tribal members for the crime of using drugs while pregnant; certainly, tribal law is that of a sovereign nation, but it’s a policy that needs a fertile cultural climate to take root in. there is just this pervasive attitude in my community that women are merely ‘incubators’ for the fetuses they carry–an attitude that is even blatantly spoken of in professional circles.

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