http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/us/case-explores-rights-of-fetus-versus-mother.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0
This is absolutely barbaric. Women are being kidnapped, held against their will, and forced into medical treatment they may not want. Why would you incarcerate pregnant women for being pregnant? This is an outrage. How can you order a woman to carry a child to term just because you think she should? Who are you to force another human being to your will just because you think you are right?
The Wisconsin law, according to the suit filed in United States District Court in Milwaukee, deprives women of physical liberty, medical privacy, due process and other constitutional rights. It is also based on faulty information about the risks to newborns and ultimately does more harm than good, the suit argues, by scaring pregnant women away from prenatal care.
The sad thing is that this has all happened before and will continue to happen.
Read more about these awe full cases
- A pregnant woman accidentally falls down a flight of stairs and is arrested on charges of attempted feticide;
- A woman who obtained the contraceptive Depo Provera later experiences a miscarriage. She is held in jail for year on murder charges;
- A woman who obtained the contraceptive Depo Provera later experiences a miscarriage. She is held in jail for year on murder charges;
- Prosecutors use the fact that a woman had an abortion in the past to show it is likely that the woman had demonstrated a disregard for life and in fact murdered her boyfriend;
- A pregnant woman about to be released from prison is re-incarcerated when the judge learns she is pregnant and HIV positive;
- A pregnant woman who is awaiting sentencing that mandates probation is held in jail to prevent her from having an abortion;
- A pregnant woman who attempts suicide survives, but because she lost the pregnancy she is arrested on charges of murder;
- A woman is convicted of homicide by child abuse after she suffers a stillbirth and tests positive for an illegal drug. All agree she had no intention of losing the pregnancy. She serves 8 years in prison before a court decides she received ineffective assistance of counsel in which her trial attorney failed to call experts who would have testified about "recent studies showing that cocaine is no more harmful to a fetus than nicotine use, poor nutrition, lack of prenatal care, or other conditions commonly associated with the urban poor;”
- A woman refuses fetal monitoring and cesarean surgery at which point medical staff call the police. She is charged with attempted homicide of her fetus based on the claim that her use of alcohol during pregnancy could have caused her fetus to be stillborn.
- A woman goes to her nearby hospital voluntarily seeking help
for her opiate addiction. Despite the fact that her addiction posed no
significant risk to the health of the fetus, she is reported to the
state, sheriffs take her into custody and she is sent to a locked
psychiatric ward away from her husband and son and where she receives no
prenatal care;
- A woman is held in a locked psychiatric facility because she
did not obtain a recommended follow-up gestational diabetes test. The
facility never administers the test;
- A woman about to be released from a mental hospital because she has been determined to be sane is, nevertheless, kept in the institution through a civil child welfare proceeding in which the state argued that she should remain institutionalized because the state alleged she would not properly care for the fetus still inside of her.
- A woman wishes to avoid unnecessary surgery if she can. She
seeks to deliver vaginally but is denied access to any hospital unless
she agrees to give up her right to medical decision-making and schedules
cesarean surgery. Her attempt to labor and delivery at home is
discovered and she is taken into custody by a sheriff while in active
labor, transported against her will to the hospital with her legs
strapped together, and forced to have the surgery;
- Despite knowing that forced cesarean surgery could kill her, a
court orders a pregnant woman to undergo that surgery – and both she and
the baby die;
- A hospital obtains a court order forcing a woman to undergo cesarean surgery. Her opposition is so strong that hospital staff ties her down with leather wrist and ankle cuffs while she screams for help.
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