Progress and Retreat
by digby
I was thinking the other day that as much as our politics remain in this conservative era, the march for gay equality and what seems to be a loosening of the absurd prohibition against marijuana indicates that social progress is still made. It's reassuring to know that culturally, at least, we aren't going back into the dark ages.
And then I read things like this and realize that when it comes to women's rights, the news is not so good. Without the right to control her reproduction, a woman simply isn't an autonomous being and we are losing ground very quickly. It's not just abortion, it's birth control. And it gets worse than that. Think Progress reports on yet another assault, this time it comes in the form of "homicide" convictions for fetal death:
A common tactic by prosecutors is singling out a group of women who are unlikely to draw public sympathy — women who may have used drugs while pregnant — to blur the line between abortion and homicide. Rennie Gibbs, for example, was 15 when she became pregnant and lost her baby in a stillbirth. Prosecutors charged her with a “depraved heart murder” after they discovered she had used cocaine, although there was “no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby’s death.” She now faces life in prison in Mississippi.
That's real life Handmaids Tale stuff and it should scare the hell out of women everywhere. Sure, console yourself that it's only those "bad girls" who use drugs. But once you start criminalizing stillbirths and miscarriages, it leads in only one direction: women having to justify to the state one of nature's most common and personal events. And who gets to define what's criminal and what isn't? If this fetishization of the "humanity" of the fetus over the humanity of the vessel in which its incubated (i.e. a "woman") is allowed to continue, every person who has undergone a miscarriage or stillbirth must understand that they could be questioned about everything they did during pregnancy, not just drug use. After all, perhaps they didn't "eat right" or stayed out too late or fell down -- who knows what kind of "negligence" caused the miscarriage? Certainly, depending on the law to use common sense in these situations is foolish because the very fact they are doing this much proves their malevolent intent.
This is a new thing. Even in the barbaric past, it was accepted that miscarriage it was a natural act. Nobody knows what causes them --- they happen to the cleanest living people and some of the most degenerate carry their pregnancies to term. Some things just happen in life and this is one of them.
We are making progress in many ways. I couldn't be happier for my gay brothers and sisters for making such a huge step forward in civil rights as they are in more and more states across the country. And it isn't over until every gay American has a right to marry. But this ongoing, systematic assault on women's rights should make everyone pay attention: these rights may be guaranteed by the constitution or by democratic decision, but they must be vigilantly defended. The enemies of freedom and equality never quit.
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