Outcry in America as pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

Outcry in America as pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges
Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion
Ed Pilkington in New York guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 June 2011 18.30 BST

Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.

"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."



Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges

[slackmaster]

1. The girl deserves 50 lashes with a wet noodle for being a loser,

...and free rehab.

[mainer]

2. How are these women identified? Is it hospitals and clinics?

Maybe pro-choice medical personnel should start selectively reporting the female relatives of GOP politicians.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. We are going back, not forwards... as we become

a... theocracy.

[Initech]

16. That's why electing a Tali... Er, Tea Party president like Palin or Romney is so dangerous.

[truebrit71]

4. That story is messed up from so many different angles...a 15 year old with a coke habit and pregnant

...never mind the fact that she lost the baby...what about the fact she was a 15 year-old with a coke habit?

This should serve as a warning to ALL women...religious white men want to control you...The day they outlaw abortion in this country, is the day I suggest to my wife and daughter that we look elsewhere to live...

[Name removed]

25. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Aerows]

26. World Nut Daily as a source?

Really?

[snagglepuss]

32. Lame criticism as it was simply reporting an actual event. Google is your

friend. How about comments from the Black Agenda Report?

snip

Powerful white male legislators, black preachers, and Christian soldiers like MLK’s anti-abortion activist niece Alveda King tell us so. They tell us that abortion is the greatest civil rights threat of our era. Like their Islamic fundamentalist comrades in the Middle East, these pro-death marauders know all too well that female sexuality is a dangerous commodity that only the jackboot of big government can control. Complicit with black hyper-religiosity and black nationalist delusions, silent progressives of color give them this license.


- Sikivu Hutchinson is the author of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (Infidel Books).



http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/planned-parenthood-and-rape-american-women

[PeaceNikki]

33. Is that story on any credible sites?

[snagglepuss]

34. The Black Agenda Report is not credible? Like I stated google is your

friend.

[PeaceNikki]

35. Oh, I get it. My mistake for not understanding the whole sub-thread.

Your contention is with the "religious white men want to control you". I misunderstood. Sorry.

I dunno about that source, but the first one you cited is pure filth and will always make whatever point you're trying to make null and void.

[snagglepuss]

37. No problem. I simply take exception to statements that don't reflect reality.

I agree about wnd but I don't baulk using a trashy site like wnd if all I need is a short straight forward report about an actual event.

[Aerows]

38. Pretty much

If I spent time googling every crazy thing World Nut Daily printed, I wouldn't have time to do anything else.

[Ian David]

5. Oh, great...

[LeftinOH]

6. A pregnant child with a drug problem.. and the solution is to penalize her???

WTF! WTF?

[toddwv]

7. Just shut up and put your burqa back on.

Won't be long now.

[AsahinaKimi]

30. And Republicans don't want Sharia law?

hmmm, doesn't sound like it to me.

[gratuitous]

8. "Outcry"? Stick to news, the comedy isn't working so good, Guardian

There's no "outcry" in the United States, because everyone against a woman ordering her own affairs loves this, and most anyone who thinks women can order their own affairs gets all squishy when the subject of reproductive freedom comes up.

[tanyev]

9. Gosh, Sarah Paylin sure is lucky nothing terrible happened in the 24 hours,

two plane flights and hour long car ride that happened between when her fluid started leaking and when she finally sought medical care.

[lbrtbell]

10. God is the most notorious abortionist of all

Far more miscarriages than abortions happening every day.

But the hypoChristians don't want to hear that. Facts always make their heads explode.

[mainer]

14. About 30% of conceptions end in miscarriage

you're absolutely right.

[fascisthunter]

11. what a bunch of sick ingorant conservatives we have in this country

they not only DO NOT understand anything, but they want to shove that ignorance down everyone's throat. THIS is pure hatred towards women in general... their premise is pure boogeyman shit! I'm sick of having to read about how these twisted people have gotten laws passed to oppress women and those who do not believe as they do.

[Blue_Tires]

12. kick

[d_r]

13. when the conservatives figure out

they'll have to pay taxes for a 15 year old girl to spend her life in jail they'll rethink it. How dare her? Expect society to feed and clothe her for life? And she'll probably be getting medical care, too.

Wait a minute, then they'll probably want the death penalty so that they don't have to pay for her jail sentence. And electricity or lethal injections will probably cost too much. How long before they think of stoning?

[jmowreader]

27. Come on, this is America...

We don't stone people to death here. Hangin' and shootin', those are the American way.

[d_r]

15. compare and contrast

this story a 15 year old girl faces possible life in jail in Mississippi because her baby is still born. This story: http://www.peoplesworld.org/third-world-mississippi-shows-failure-of-conservative-policies (I saw posted on DU earlier today) points out that Mississippi has some of the worst health care in the US because of Republican economic policies. So how many babies are still born because their mothers do not have adequate prenatal care, due to the economic policies of the republicans?

[sarcasmo]

17. The family values crowd has this country so beyond Fucked!

[BlueIris]

18. We've been Misogynistan for a while now. It's shameful. nt

[Lorien]

40. The ERA never passed, and this is the natural outcome of that. It's more than

just reproductive rights; our rights in the workplace and everywhere else have been compromised, yet somehow mainstream America believes that "feminism" is a dirty word and that the fight is over.

[KamaAina]

19. Meanwhile, across the line in Alabama...

Amanda Kimbrough is one of the women who have been ensnared as a result of the law being applied in a wholly different way. During her pregnancy her foetus was diagnosed with possible Down's syndrome and doctors suggested she consider a termination, which Kimbrough declined as she is not in favour of abortion.

The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and died 19 minutes after birth.

Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with "chemical endangerment" of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy – a claim she has denied....

She now awaits an appeal ruling from the higher courts in Alabama, which if she loses will see her begin a 10-year sentence behind bars. "I'm just living one day at a time, looking after my three other kids," she said. "They say I'm a criminal, how do I answer that? I'm a good mother."

:wow: :wtf:

[zorahopkins]

20. "Unborn Baby"?

The term "unborn baby" has no meaning at all -- it is part of the anti-choice vocabulary.

The preferred term is "fetus".

[City Lights]

21. I must have missed the "outcry."

If I didn't come here on a daily basis I wouldn't even know about it.

[surrealAmerican]

31. You got that right.

We are the outcry.

[loyalsister]

22. Unequal opportunity crime

Are there any similar criminal laws that only apply to men? It's a clear 14th Amendment violation.

[Solly Mack]

23. K&R

[malaise]

24. You've got to understand

Folks have private prisons to fill. :sarcasm:

[Aerows]

28. I can't imagine how a 15 year old with a coke habit

is qualified to raise a child. That said, rather than prosecute her, how about addressing the coke habit, and giving her some counseling on using birth control? Throwing her in jail until she's 21 or trying her as an adult and keeping her for an extended sentence isn't going to a damn thing about the fact that she's got a coke habit and the fact that she's 15 and already pregnant.

Who thinks not having an education because she's put in prison is going to help this young woman make something of her life? This is really a two-fold tragedy. A dead child, and a living child that has no future.

[marlakay]

29. Okay so she shouldn't take any drugs while preg

but so should women who can't have sugar eat sugar, same for a ton of other things like smoking etc that you shouldn't do while pregnant, going to charge them all with murder?

[HelenWheels]

36. Alcohol is harmful to fetuses

Will they arrest women who drink alcohol? Cigarettes have been shown to cause low weight births. Will smokers be imprisoned? What about women who ride horses and suffer an abortion if they fall?

[WillyT]

39. K & R !!!

:kick: