From Truth Out: http://truth-out.org/news/item/15484-at-what-point-in-pregnancy-does-a-womans-personhood-end
By Laura Flanders
Tuesday, 02 April 2013
“I think the effort to restrict abortion has been a backlash, not just to the decision to end a pregnancy but the decision to treat women like full and equal participants in our society.” That’s the conclusion drawn by Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, after years of working with women who’ve been incarcerated on charges of feticide or fetal homicide
At work while pregnant? Driving? Working with chemicals or heavy loads? You better know the legal code, says Paltrow. In many states, if something were to happen to your pregnancy that could be traced to your behavior, you could find yourself dragged into jail under fetal protection or personhood laws.
Even progressive interviewers will talk about personhood measures as if their only impact is going to be on abortion, says Paltrow. In fact, “We are talking about the status of women and whether you can add fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses to the Constitution without subtracting pregnant women from it. You cannot.”
A case in point is Bei Bei Shuai, who has been incarcerated for more than a year facing charges of murder and attempted feticide in Indiana after she attempted to take her own life while she was in her third trimester of pregnancy.
“This is really is a national issue,” Paltrow told GRITtv. “Will Indiana become a first state to declare a system of separate and unequal law for pregnant women, a new Jane Crow?”
The term is aptly chosen because the last time the United States saw an anti-abortion, pro-criminalization drive like this was in the bitterly divided years after the Civil War. At issue then (as now) were economic insecurity, racial anxiety, and a growing gap between rich and poor. Then and now, the assault on women’s rights was combined with an assault on workers’ rights and civil rights. Then as now, the drive to control women was fronted by a fight over access to abortion and birth control; it was about social control, democracy and economics. And then and now, wrapped up in it all was the curious question of “personhood.” (For more on the history, see this report on “Legitimate Rape, Sluts and Femi-Nazis” written for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation last fall.)
Continue reading at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/15484-at-what-point-in-pregnancy-does-a-womans-personhood-end
