Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Women's Rights & Issues
Related: About this forumThe latest anti-choice move: try to take custody of a woman's fetus
The latest anti-choice move: try to take custody of a woman's fetusStates have tried all sorts of things to prevent women from having abortions. Theyve enacted waiting periods, ultrasound laws and parental notifications. Theyve passed laws that force doctors to lie to women and force women to visit with ideological zealots. Some legislators have even attempted to make women get a mans consent before obtaining the procedure a paternalistic permission slip to access their legal rights.
But Alabama has brought efforts to restrict abortion to a whole new level, as the state tried this week to stop a woman from getting an abortion by terminating her parental rights... to her fetus.
District attorney Chris Connolly filed a petition to terminate an incarcerated womans parental rights for the sole purpose of stopping her from ending her pregnancy. The woman, known as Jane Doe, had filed a lawsuit in order to be granted a furlough to obtain the procedure. Connolly told a local paper, Our position, if the termination for parental rights is granted, is that [she] would not have standing to obtain the abortion. Hes arguing that Does parental rights should be rescinded because she is facing charges of chemical endangerment of a child.
Alabama ACLU legal director Randall Marshall, one of the womans lawyers, told the Huffington Post that this is the first time the state has used these charges to try to prevent an abortion. It appears to me that what the state is attempting to do is turn Jane Doe into a vessel, and control every aspect of her life, he said.
If this dystopian Handmaids Tale nonsense wasnt bad enough, Does fetus was even appointed an attorney, thanks to a law passed in 2014 allowing such a move. (As The Daily Shows brilliant Jessica Williams said to one such fetal attorney: You have a crazy-ass job, sir.)
Doe now says she no longer wants an abortion under circumstances her original lawyers called highly suspicious but the disturbing precedent that Alabama has set through this petition remains. How much longer will we put up with this obsessive encroachment onto womens bodies and rights? How much more insanity will it take? A lawyer for every fetus? Were already fighting against constitutional personhood status for zygotes and attempts to defund a womans health organization thanks to the 3% it spends performing abortions, so perhaps the anti-choice movement has reached peak wacky.
Baffling legal maneuvering aside, whats worst in cases like this one in Alabama where the state focuses its misogynist ire on the most marginalized women is that theyre commonplace. Women in prison, women who use drugs, women of color and low-income women have long been targets for anti-choice legislators, not just because they have less support to fight back, but because the people attacking them believe that no one will care. Its nastiness of the worst sort.
Abortion is legal. And while Id like to say that no amount of strange, overreaching and insulting litigation or legislation will change that, it has, and it still could. And if it does, we know who will be penalized most.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/31/the-latest-anti-abortion-move-alabama-custody-fetus
___________________
Fucking hell.
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
9 replies, 2544 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (11)
ReplyReply to this post
9 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
The latest anti-choice move: try to take custody of a woman's fetus (Original Post)
Novara
Jul 2015
OP
drm604
(16,230 posts)1. Assholes!
Novara
(5,842 posts)2. Fine. You want to take custody away from the woman and turn her into a vessel?
Then you take the child when it's born. Better yet, you take control of all unwanted pregnancies, give the women healthcare, give the children homes, and educate them for the rest of their lives. It's a hell of a lot more expensive to do that than to let women end unwanted pregnancies.
Fucking slimeballs.
Novara
(5,842 posts)3. Even better, create lab babies
You care about precious babies so much? Make all women sterile and create some lab babies. Take her completely out of the equation.
Shit. They're fucking insane.
shenmue
(38,506 posts)4. Paging Margaret Atwood
What is this shit?!
malthaussen
(17,194 posts)5. Definitely a scheme only a Republican could think of.
The pretzel logic of that one defies imagination.
-- Mal
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)6. The successors of the plantation owners at work.
Megahurtz
(7,046 posts)7. OMG n/t
niyad
(113,293 posts)8. f*** this woman-hating gestational slaver with somethin really hard, and sharp.
niyad
(113,293 posts)9. this is nothing new, though. these woman-hating gestational slavers have been going to court
for years to get custody of the fetus.