THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

I admit that I had not paid much attention to the occasional news item generated by this trend but knowing the evil that the perpetrators of this idea are capable of, I hope it is not too late to do something about it.

In the first study of its kind, to be published on Tuesday, researchers from the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) identified 413 criminal and civil cases across 44 states involving the arrests, detentions and equivalent deprivations of pregnant women’s liberty between 1973 and 2005. NAWP said that it is aware of a further 250 cases since 2005. Both figures are likely to be underestimates, it said.

The report, which will appear in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, found that women were denied a wide range of basic human rights, including the right to life, liberty, equal protection and due process of law “based solely on their pregnancy status”.

It found a wide range of cases in which pregnant women were arrested and detained not only if they ended a pregnancy or expressed an intention to end a pregnancy, but also after suffering unintentional pregnancy loss.

The cases of detention and forced medical intervention varied widely and included one in which a judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her having an abortion.

Another involved a woman in Oregon who refused a doctor’s recommendation for additional testing for gestational diabetes. She was held in a locked psychiatric ward. Another case involved a court in Washington DC, which ordered a critically ill woman to undergo caesarian section over her objections. Neither she nor the baby survived.

Lynn Paltrow, executive director of NAPW and lead author of the study said: “Our analysis of the legal claims used to justify the arrests found they relied on post-Roe measures such a feticide laws and the same arguments made in support of so-called ‘personhood measures’ – namely that state actors would be empowered to treat fertilised eggs, embryos and foetuses as completely legally separate from the pregnant women.”

She said: “It is not just the criminalisation of pregnant woman, that almost minimises the scope of what we are talking about. They are using civil statues to keep women committed. Right we’re ordering the foetus to be committed and you have to come too.”

And this shit will continue to happen until the vaginalantes are suppressed.