Archive: 2013

The National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW)’s new study, “Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973– 2005: Implications for Women’s Legal Status and Public Health” appears today in the peer-reviewed Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. I’m sharing some highlights from their press statement, but check out the entire piece, including their discussion of political actions.

Here are some of the cases NAPW summarizes:

• A woman in Utah gave birth to twins. When one was stillborn, she was arrested and charged with criminal homicide based on the claim that her decision to delay cesarean surgery was the cause of the stillbirth.
• After a hearing that lasted less than a day, a court issued an order requiring a critically ill pregnant woman in Washington, DC, to undergo cesarean surgery over her objections.  Neither she nor her baby survived.
• A judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her from having an abortion.
• A woman in Oregon who did not comply with a doctor’s recommendation to have additional testing for gestational diabetes was subjected to involuntary civil commitment.  During her detention, the additional testing was never performed.
• A Louisiana woman was charged with murder and spent approximately a year in jail before her counsel was able to show that what was deemed a murder of a fetus or newborn was actually a miscarriage that resulted from medication given to her by a health care provider.
• In Texas a pregnant woman who sometimes smoked marijuana to ease nausea and boost her appetite gave birth to healthy twins.  She was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance to a minor.
• A doctor in Wisconsin had concerns about a woman’s plans to have her birth attended by a midwife. As a result, a civil court order of protective custody for the woman’s fetus was obtained. The order authorized the sheriff’s department to take the woman into custody, transport her to a hospital, and subject her to involuntary testing and medical treatment.

In all, the researchers identified 413 criminal and civil cases involving the arrests, detentions and equivalent deprivations of pregnant women’s physical liberty that occurred between 1973 and 2005. These 413 cases in 44 states, the District of Columbia and federal jurisdictions are likely a substantial undercount and does not include more than 250 known cases that have occurred since 2005. You can read here about a decision last week in Alabama that will intensify the state’s ability to police pregnant women.

In the cases reviewed for  this paper, pregnant women were subject to arrests; incarceration; increases in prison or jail sentences; detentions in hospitals, mental institutions and drug treatment programs; and forced medical interventions, including surgery. The researchers wanted to know, what was the basis of these arrests and forced interventions?

“Our analysis of the legal claims used to justify these arrests found that they relied on post-Roe measures such as feticide laws and the same arguments made in support of so-called ‘personhood’ measures – namely that state actors should be empowered to treat fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses as completely legally separate from the pregnant woman,” said Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) and lead author of the study.

Jeanne Flavin, PhD, Fordham University professor of sociology, president of NAPW’s board of directors, and the study’s co-author, said “The public debate about personhood and other anti-abortion measures tends to focus narrowly on abortion.  Our study makes clear that all pregnant women are threatened by such measures.  These measures not only undermine maternal, fetal, and child health, they deny women’s status as full constitutional persons, as human beings.” Flavin is author of Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women’s Reproduction in America.

While the study shows that low-income women and African American women are more likely to be deprived of their physical liberty, it also confirms that these state interventions are happening in every region of the country and affect women of all races. The researchers argue that as “personhood” measures continue to be promoted in state legislatures and in Congress, and as we observe the 40^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this study broadens the conversation from one just about abortion to one about health policy and the legal status of pregnant women.

Read the report.

–Virginia Rutter

This fall I had the great privilege of designing and teaching the first Sociology of Gender class to be offered at the City College of New York.  My goal of the class was for the students to leave able to apply a nuanced gender lens to whatever social problem tickled their fancy. One night reading their weekly reflexive journals, I witnessed that “click” moment when the students start to engage with the class material in very exciting ways.  More importantly, I realized I had stumbled upon the next generation of gender justice thinkers.  They were asking questions and making connections that I knew the movement needed to hear.  How could I NOT invite them to blog here at Girl w/ Pen, a space that has long supported the next generation of feminists?  So without further ado, here are some of my star students, chatting about a few of the key debates we had in class this semester. Enjoy!

Throughout the semester, we debated whether the goal of a movement for greater gender justice should be the expansion of gender or the explosion of gender.  In other words, is your utopian vision a world with a multiplicity of genders or a genderless world?  Where did you end up in this debate?

Alex Constantin: Although I understand some (utopian) reason behind the call for exploding gender to reach a genderless, liberated world, my personal sense of justice lends towards the expansion of gender. There are still far too many oppressive gender rules for me not advocate for expanding gender. We have an entire outdated archive on the male and female dichotomy that calls for an urgent expansion above and beyond the binary.

Gloria Robles: I personally believe that the goal of a movement for greater gender justice should be on the expansion of gender – not the explosion, or elimination. To draw a comparison of gender to race, it’s important to recognize that there are differences and to not promote “color-blindness.” We are all unique and have many nuances to who we are and that should not be disregarded but celebrated.

Sandra Prieto: I can’t really relate to a genderless world. A genderless world would only allow some other category to restructure how we relate to each other, like sports team affiliations or preferred ice cream flavor. Maybe I’ve read too many Orwell novels, but the only genderless world I can imagine is where we all have to mask our faces and bodies. Sure, it might create greater equal opportunities, but might it also strip away one way we express ourselves? That is why I find the expansion of gender more appealing. With the introduction of more genders, we would no longer be able to assign masculinity to just males and femininity to just females. Instead of expecting everyone to fit into one of two ideal categories, we would be creating more flexible gender norms.

Shari Mohammed: For me, this is a both/and question. To successfully move towards greater justice, we need to expand gender, which will eventually entail the explosion of gender. Not that this will result in a genderless world, just an exploded understanding of what is gender. We need to recreate how we think of, react to, and how we express gender. My utopian world would be everyone expressing their gender however they wish without fear of social sanctions.  The first step, in my opinion, is eradicating the sexism inherent in our current binary system and then working toward an expanded sense of acceptance.

Dairanys Grullon-Virgil: We need an explosion of gender. Today people more than ever are becoming more comfortable and proud of who they are. The problem is that we still judge individuals based on socially constructed ideologies of gender. I think that the conversation about having greater gender justice should revolve around acknowledging the multiplicity of gender identities, instead of imposing gender identities to individuals.

Erin Crowder: It is difficult for me to pick a side in this debate.  Expanding what is considered normal sounds utopian at first, but then I think about how much I despise the word “normal.”  It is quite clear that norms are always regulating and oppressive, so why simply create more?  On the other hand, however, I feel a genderless world is problematic too.  I believe there is an internal force creating gender that creates our identity.  Personally, my gender is central to my identity, although, I do not know if this is a good thing.  What I do know is that in a genderless world I would lose this part of my identity.  Lacking this identity could be detrimental, but it could also be a source of liberation.   I find myself somersaulting between the two sides in this debate.

Kenya Bushell: I feel that we should live in a genderless world. The world shouldn’t have expectations of anyone for any reason, especially regarding genetics. It shouldn’t matter that a person was born a male or a female. They had no control of this outcome and therefore should not be controlled by it. As we continue to conflate gender and sex, a genderless world is the only way I see out of this conundrum.

One of your first assignments was to go out in public and do your gender differently in a way that challenged current gender norms.  What gender norm did you choose to break and what was the experience like for you? more...