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Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

Study Finds Widespread ‘Criminalisation of Pregnancy’ in US Institutions

Author:     KAREN MCVEIGH
Source:     The Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date:     Monday 14 January 2013 21.00 EST
 Link: Study Finds Widespread ‘Criminalisation of Pregnancy’ in US Institutions
Stephan:   This story should horrify, and outrage you. I read it early this morning, in my first pass for today's SR. It upset me so much that I had to just stop and sit, and meditate for some moments. And it worried me that I knew nothing about this. That's how deeply buried this part of the war on women has been. As you can see, this is where personhood amendments take us. Notice that this is 75 per cent a Red value state issue. For this reason I see it as also part of the Great Schism trend. Not only on the basis of values, but because the Blue value states are tiring of financially supporting the lunacies of the Red value states.

NEW YORK — Hundreds of women have been arrested, convicted, jailed, detained in mental institutions or forced to endure medical procedures as a result of the ‘criminalisation of pregnancy’ over the last four decades, a new report has found.

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 […]

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