The two-day Take Root conference examined the tenets of reproductive justice: ensuring “the right to have a child, the right to not have a child, and the right to raise that child in a healthy, safe environment.”
There’s an old saying: A hit dog will holler. That phrase came to mind as I read Personhood USA’s unhinged response to the new study conducted by Lynn Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Professor Jeanne Flavin of Fordham University. Never mind the facts, Personhood USA makes up its own.
A federal court decides there is no precedent for charging a woman with a criminal abortion. At least, not yet.
Women were once seen as “second victims” of abortion. Now, as women face murder trials for unintended pregnancy losses, they’re potential fodder for a prison system that is steadily becoming one of the biggest businesses in the country.
Lawmakers in Alabama and Indiana are moving to arrest and incarcerate pregnant women with mental illness and drug addiction, and charge them with harming their fetus. National Advocates for Pregnant Women is working to defend the basic rights of pregnant women suffering from mental illness, severe depression, or any other health problem to be treated like other human beings experiencing the same problems.
Subject: Do you know of any resources for this woman?
“This woman,” who has no car, lives in a South Dakota town a 12-hour round trip drive from the nearest abortion provider.
For nearly two decades popular media claimed that any illegal drugs used by pregnant women would inevitably and significantly damage their babies. The actual scientific research contradicts this assumption.
I am thrilled to let you know that the Kentucky Supreme Court once again refused to advance the war on drugs to women’s wombs and made clear that pregnant women, no less than other persons, are protected by the rule of law.
Across the country, politicians continue to use medical misinformation about drugs, pregnant women, and parents to justify new punitive laws and counterproductive state actions. On April 29, 2010, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, with New York University’s School of Law, and the NYU Silver School of Social Work will be hosting its second continuing education program to address the myths and misinformation that too often influence public policies concerning drug use, pregnant women and parents.
Tomorrow, the Kentucky Supreme Court will hear a case involving prosecution of a pregnant, drug-using woman. The case has broad implications for women’s rights in pregnancy and advocates for pregnant women are concerned.
