Recently an opinion piece in the New York Times laid out the attacks on the civil rights of pregnant women. Written by Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the column outlines a number of assaults on women’s rights, ostensibly carried out in the interest of protecting the health of the fetus.
Examples include:
- “In Iowa, a pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs was reported to the police after seeking help at a hospital. She was arrested for ‘attempted fetal homicide.’
- “In Utah, a woman gave birth to twins; one was stillborn. Health care providers believed that the stillbirth was the result of the woman’s decision to delay having a cesarean. She was arrested on charges of fetal homicide.
- “In Louisiana, a woman who went to the hospital for unexplained vaginal bleeding was locked up for over a year on charges of second-degree murder before medical records revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at 11 to 15 weeks of pregnancy.” (NYT, Nov. 7)
In another case, a woman in labor at home was forcibly taken to the hospital and given a c-section against her will. What a violation of her bodily autonomy and right to make decisions about how to birth her own baby!
What all these incidents have in common is an underlying assumption that pregnant women’s lives and rights are less important than the potential life they are carrying within them; or in simpler terms, that a pregnant woman is no more than a vessel for the fetus.
Whether pregnant by choice or by chance, women MUST be able to make their own medical decisions: about whether or not to continue with a pregnancy and if carrying to term, to follow their own birth plans. For a woman who wants a baby, miscarriage and stillbirth represent a painful loss that must be grieved; grieving women should not then be criminalized. Likewise, pregnant women struggling with substance abuse or mental illnesses such as depression need compassionate care, not punishment.
Women are not property, we are not “breeders” or vessels for fetuses, we are people with rights!
