{"id":5621,"date":"2013-01-15T12:53:48","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T18:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=5621"},"modified":"2014-01-28T13:12:31","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T19:12:31","slug":"nice-work-policing-pregnant-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2013\/01\/15\/nice-work-policing-pregnant-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Policing Pregnant Women"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/7\/7f\/Handcuffs-Black.jpg\/320px-Handcuffs-Black.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"130\" height=\"89\" \/>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org\/\">National Advocates for Pregnant Women<\/a> (NAPW)&#8217;s new study, <a href=\"http:\/\/jhppl.dukejournals.org\/content\/early\/2013\/01\/15\/03616878-1966324.full.pdf+html\">\u201cArrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973\u2013 2005: Implications for Women\u2019s Legal Status and Public Health\u201d<\/a> appears today in the peer-reviewed <a href=\"http:\/\/jhppl.dukejournals.org\/\"><em>Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law<\/em><\/a>. I\u2019m sharing some highlights from their press statement, but check out the entire piece, including their discussion of political actions.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some of the cases NAPW summarizes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<li>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. \u00a0Neither she nor her baby survived.<\/li>\n<li>A judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her from having an abortion.<\/li>\n<li>A woman in Oregon who did not comply with a doctor\u2019s recommendation to have additional testing for gestational diabetes was subjected to involuntary civil commitment. \u00a0During her detention, the additional testing was never performed.<\/li>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<li>In Texas a pregnant woman who sometimes smoked marijuana to ease nausea and boost her appetite gave birth to healthy twins.\u00a0 She was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance to a minor.<\/li>\n<li>A doctor in Wisconsin had concerns about a woman\u2019s plans to have her birth attended by a midwife. As a result, a civil court order of protective custody for the woman\u2019s fetus was obtained. The order authorized the sheriff\u2019s department to take the woman into custody, transport her to a hospital, and subject her to involuntary testing and medical treatment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In all, the researchers identified 413 criminal and civil cases involving the  arrests, detentions and equivalent deprivations of pregnant women\u2019s  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 <a href=\"http:\/\/advocatesforpregnantwomen.org\/blog\/2013\/01\/press_release_national_advocat.php\">read here<\/a> about a decision last week in Alabama that will intensify the state&#8217;s ability to police pregnant women.<\/p>\n<p>In the cases reviewed for\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur analysis of the legal claims used to justify these arrests found that they relied on post-<em>Roe <\/em>measures  such as feticide laws and the same arguments made in support of  so-called \u2018personhood\u2019 measures \u2013 namely that state actors should be  empowered to treat fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses as completely  legally separate from the pregnant woman,\u201d said <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/lynn-m-paltrow\/\">Lynn Paltrow<\/a>, Executive Director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) and lead author of the study.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fordham.edu\/academics\/programs_at_fordham_\/sociology__anthropol\/faculty\/flavin_9324.asp\">Jeanne Flavin<\/a>, PhD, Fordham University professor of sociology, president of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org\/main\/about_us\/staff.php\">NAPW&#8217;s board of directors<\/a>, and the study\u2019s co-author, said \u201cThe public debate about personhood and other anti-abortion measures tends to focus narrowly on abortion. \u00a0Our study makes clear that <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">all<\/span> pregnant women are threatened by such measures.\u00a0 These measures not only undermine maternal, fetal, and child health, they deny women\u2019s status as full constitutional persons, as human beings.\u201d Flavin is author of <a href=\"http:\/\/nyupress.org\/books\/book-details.aspx?bookId=595#.UPQTR2c__Qo\"><em>Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women\u2019s Reproduction in America<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cpersonhood\u201d measures continue to be promoted in state legislatures and in Congress, and as we observe the 40<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary of <em>Roe v. Wade,<\/em> this study broadens the conversation from one just about abortion to one about health policy and the legal status of pregnant women.<\/p>\n<p>Read <a href=\"http:\/\/jhppl.dukejournals.org\/content\/early\/2013\/01\/15\/03616878-1966324.full.pdf+html\">the report<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?page_id=31\">Virginia Rutter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW)&#8217;s new study, \u201cArrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973\u2013 2005: Implications for Women\u2019s Legal Status and Public Health\u201d appears today in the peer-reviewed Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. I\u2019m sharing some highlights from their press statement, but check out the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21108,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nice-work","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7042,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5621\/revisions\/7042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}