PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "HCR 5004 would eliminate medical choices for women, and not just those about abortion. The bill would limit a woman’s ability to make decisions about: contraceptive care, like IUDs and emergency contraception; cancer treatments; organ transplants; and in vitro fertilization. It also opens up Kansas women for potential prosecution for miscarriages or other activities that potentially could harm a pregnancy. This isn’t hyperbole. In Indiana, Bei Bei Shuai was charged with murder and child neglect after trying to commit suicide because her premature baby died. Another Indiana woman, Purvi Patel, was convicted of feticide and child neglect after she had a miscarriage that her doctors suspected she had induced. Rennie Gibbs was charged with murder in Mississippi after she suffered a stillbirth at 15 years old in 2005. Her case was only dismissed in 2014, putting a young woman through a nine-year legal ordeal. Latrice Fisher, another woman from Mississippi, is currently being charged under the same statutes as Ms. Gibbs, because she had an unattended home birth and her baby did not survive. Her case is still ongoing. In countries with laws similar to HCR 5004 such as El Salvador and Mexico, women are regularly charged with murder and in-prisoned for years for having miscarriages."
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POST: "Giving rights to a fetus would subtract rights from women," by Julie A. Burkhart, opinion contributor, published by The Hill, on April 5, 2019. (Julie A. Burkhart is the founder and CEO of Trust Women Foundation. Trust Women opens clinics that provide abortion care in underserved communities so that all women can make their own decisions about their healthcare).
GIST: Recently,
I made the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Wichita to the Kansas State
Capitol in Topeka. I didn’t make the drive to appreciate the spring
grasses growing on the rolling plains of the Flint Hills. Instead, I
went to testify against a proposed amendment to the Kansas State
Constitution, HCR 5004, that would grant “equal rights to all Kansans”
by extending equal legal rights to embryos at the time of fertilization. In essence, HCR 5004
is an attempt to establish the personhood of embryos and fetuses. It
would create a new legal doctrine that would challenge the current
definition of who is recognized as a person for the purposes of the law.
While anti-abortion advocates would argue that this is how it should
be, I ask that you consider how such a position would affect persons
that have already been born. There
is no way to give the rights of personhood to embryos or fetuses
without infringing on the rights of the women who carry those
pregnancies. There is currently no way to carry a pregnancy to term that
does not require the womb of a living person. This means that women’s
rights to bodily autonomy and legal personhood would be directly damaged
by their potential to become pregnant by HCR 5004. While
it is likely that the 21 male members of the House of Representatives
who are sponsoring this bill are only intending to score points with
anti-choice extremists, this amendment would have many devastating
consequences. The amendment contains no exemptions for abortions in
cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the woman. HCR
5004 would eliminate medical choices for women, and not just those
about abortion. The bill would limit a woman’s ability to make decisions
about: contraceptive care, like IUDs and emergency contraception;
cancer treatments; organ transplants; and in vitro fertilization. It
also opens up Kansas women for potential prosecution for miscarriages or
other activities that potentially could harm a pregnancy. This isn’t hyperbole. In Indiana, Bei Bei Shuai
was charged with murder and child neglect after trying to commit
suicide because her premature baby died. Another Indiana woman, Purvi Patel, was convicted of feticide and child neglect after she had a miscarriage that her doctors suspected she had induced. Rennie Gibbs was charged with murder in Mississippi after she suffered a stillbirth at 15 years old in 2005. Her case was only dismissed in 2014, putting a young woman through a nine-year legal ordeal. Latrice Fisher,
another woman from Mississippi, is currently being charged under the
same statutes as Ms. Gibbs, because she had an unattended home birth and
her baby did not survive. Her case is still ongoing. In countries with
laws similar to HCR 5004 such as El Salvador and Mexico, women are regularly charged with murder and in-prisoned for years for having miscarriages. Similar bills to HCR 5004 have been introduced in several other states over the last few years. Most seriously, last November, voters in Alabama
passed a constitutional amendment establishing fetal personhood by 59
percent. While these types of laws aren’t currently able to criminalize
abortion, they would ban abortion if Roe v. Wade was overturned. They
also create dangerous precedents in other legal areas. In what is
clearly designed to be a test case, a man in Alabama was recently
granted the right to sue an abortion clinic on behalf of what he claims
was his fetus. Madison County Probate Judge Frank Barger
ruled that Ryan Magers could name the fetus as a co-plaintiff and sue
the clinic and the company that manufactures an abortifacient for
“wrongful death” after the young woman he claims he impregnated had an
abortion. This case is a clear example of the danger posed by personhood
legislation. The Washington Post reported that the young woman (she was 16 and he was 19 at the time) is opposed to the lawsuit. An
anti-choice group that supports personhood is assisting with the
lawsuit. It is clear that this case was brought as an attempt to test if
a court would recognize a fetus as having equal legal rights to a
person who is already born. Giving fetuses or embryos the same legal
rights as people who are already born is a direct attack on the right to
abortion. It also endangers the civil rights of any
person what could become pregnant. There is no way to give additional
rights to a fetus that do not subtract from the rights of the person who
is carrying it. This was the central legal question of Roe v. Wade. It is also increasingly the anti-choice movement’s favorite tactic for denying the personhood of women.""
The entire post can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
