PUBLISHER'S NOTE: "I have taken on the them of criminalizing reproduction - a natural theme for a Blog concerned with flawed science in its myriad forms and its flawed devotees (like Charles Smith), as I am utterly opposed to the current movement in the United States and some other countries - thankfully not Canada any more - towards imprisoning women and their physicians on the basis of sham science (or any other basis). Control over their reproductive lives is far too important to women in America or anywhere else so they can participate equally in the economic and social life of their nations without fear for loss their freedom at the hands of political opportunists and fanatics. I will
continue to follow relevant cases such as Purvi Patel and Bei Bei Shuai - and the mounting wave of legislative attacks aimed at chipping away at Roe V. Wade and ultimately dismantling it."
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "On Wednesday, Marshae Jones, a 27-year-old woman from Birmingham, was taken into police custody
after being indicted
in Jefferson County on a manslaughter charge. She is currently being
held on a $50,000 bond. In December, Jones — then five months pregnant —
got into
an altercation with a 23-year-old woman outside of a store. The woman,
Ebony Jemison, pulled out a gun and shot Jones in the stomach. Jones
miscarried shortly after.
According to a report from Al.com,
police initially charged Jemison with manslaughter over the shooting.
But a jury declined to indict her, saying that Jones initiated the
altercation and that Jemison was acting in self-defense when she shot at
Jones."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Alabama is one of 38 states
with a fetal homicide law that recognizes a fetus as a potential victim of a crime against a pregnant woman. When
the indictment was reported on Wednesday, it immediately raised
questions about why the woman who was shot was the one charged. It’s not
the first time that Alabama has been in the news for pursuing
controversial criminal charges against a woman of color: In 2018,
Jacqueline Dixon, a black woman from Selma, was
charged with murder after shooting
her abusive husband in self-defense. Media coverage of Dixon’s case
noted that she had not been protected by Alabama’s “Stand Your Ground”
self-defense law, and local police said that Dixon did not seek
consistent enforcement of a protection order against her estranged
husband. A jury
declined to indict Dixon later that year. Based on the information that has been released so far,
advocates argue that Jones’s ordeal, in some ways, highlights another
problem: the ways that mothers and expecting women — especially black
women — deal with what a 2012 New York Times Magazine article called the
“
criminalization of ‘bad mothers,’”
the use of the justice system to prosecute women for things like
miscarriages caused by drug misuse. In other cases, women have faced
criminal charges after the death of their children in accidents, or for
inducing their own abortions. In Alabama, advocates note that these
sorts of prosecutions are particularly frequent, and they fear that they
could increase further due to a new (but not yet implemented) law
banning most abortions in the state."
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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Marshae Jones’s indictment comes just over a month after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey
signed the strictest anti-abortion law in the country,
effectively banning almost all abortions in the state and not including
exceptions for rape and incest. That law is not set to take effect
until November, and
Jones was not charged under it. Still, reproductive rights groups say it
is alarming that she was indicted, pointing to the case as a potential
sign of what will happen to women, especially low-income women of color
in the state, once the law is in effect. “Marshae Jones is being charged
with manslaughter for
being pregnant and getting shot while engaging in an altercation with a
person who had a gun,” Amanda Reyes of the Yellowhammer Fund, an
abortion rights advocacy group,
said in a statement.
“Tomorrow, it will be another black woman, maybe for having a drink
while pregnant. And after that, another, for not obtaining adequate
prenatal care.” Reproductive justice groups argue that these issues also
reflect a tragic reality in several states with highly restrictive
abortion laws, many of which struggle with high rates of poverty, high
maternal and infant deaths, and wide racial disparities in infant and
maternal mortality. This is also the case in Alabama, which is the
sixth poorest state in the nation, where black women are
roughly three times more likely than white women to die during or shortly after childbirth. In 2014,
fewer than half of the state’s 67 counties had hospitals that offered obstetrics services, limiting many rural women’s ability to access pre- and postnatal health care. Reproductive rights advocates say Jones’s treatment shows
that women are still being punished and criminalized for things they
shouldn’t be, and that the system is failing them in too many ways.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
STORY: A shooting ended Marshae Jones’s pregnancy. Police say it’s her fault," by reporter P.J. Lockhart, published by VOX on June 27, 2019. (P.J. Lockhart writes about race: how it intersects with gender, sexuality, and
economic status, how it influences social justice movements, and how
communities of color interact with and are affected by policy and
politics.
SUB-HEADING: "Reproductive rights advocates say the story shows how pregnant women of color are criminalized.
GIST: "In Alabama, a black woman is facing criminal charges after
being shot in the stomach and having a miscarriage.
The story has drawn national attention and outrage from reproductive
rights groups who argue that the incident is a disturbing example of the
mistreatment and criminalization of low-income pregnant women of color. On Wednesday, Marshae Jones, a 27-year-old woman from Birmingham, was taken into police custody
after being indicted in Jefferson County on a manslaughter charge. She is currently being held on a $50,000 bond. In December, Jones — then five months pregnant — got into
an altercation with a 23-year-old woman outside of a store. The woman,
Ebony Jemison, pulled out a gun and shot Jones in the stomach. Jones
miscarried shortly after.
According to a report from Al.com,
police initially charged Jemison with manslaughter over the shooting.
But a jury declined to indict her, saying that Jones initiated the
altercation and that Jemison was acting in self-defense when she shot at
Jones.
Local police argued that Jones deserved the blame not
only for the shooting but also for not removing herself from the
situation earlier. Pleasant Grove Police Lt. Danny Reid said that Jones
allegedly “initiated and pressed the fight,” according to
Al.com. “Let’s not lose sight that the unborn baby is the victim
here,’’ Reid said. “She had no choice in being brought unnecessarily
into a fight where she was relying on her mother for protection.”
Alabama is one of 38 states
with a fetal homicide law that recognizes a fetus as a potential victim of a crime against a pregnant woman. When
the indictment was reported on Wednesday, it immediately raised
questions about why the woman who was shot was the one charged. It’s not
the first time that Alabama has been in the news for pursuing
controversial criminal charges against a woman of color: In 2018,
Jacqueline Dixon, a black woman from Selma, was
charged with murder after shooting
her abusive husband in self-defense. Media coverage of Dixon’s case
noted that she had not been protected by Alabama’s “Stand Your Ground”
self-defense law, and local police said that Dixon did not seek
consistent enforcement of a protection order against her estranged
husband. A jury
declined to indict Dixon later that year. Based on the information that has been released so far,
advocates argue that Jones’s ordeal, in some ways, highlights another
problem: the ways that mothers and expecting women — especially black
women — deal with what a 2012 New York Times Magazine article called the
“
criminalization of ‘bad mothers,’”
the use of the justice system to prosecute women for things like
miscarriages caused by drug misuse. In other cases, women have faced
criminal charges after the death of their children in accidents, or for
inducing their own abortions. In Alabama, advocates note that these
sorts of prosecutions are particularly frequent, and they fear that they
could increase further due to a new (but not yet implemented) law
banning most abortions in the state.
Jones’s story calls attention to the criminalization and shaming of pregnant black women and black mothers
News of Jones’s indictment has been surprising for many,
but hers is far from the first case of a woman being aggressively
prosecuted after a miscarriage. In March 2018, police in eastern Arkansas announced that they had arrested
Keysheonna Reed,
a black woman who had placed the bodies of her stillborn twins in a
suitcase after unexpectedly going into labor in her bathtub in December
2017. When the suitcase was found on the side of a county road weeks
later, Reed was charged with two felony counts of abuse of a corpse, and
her bail was set at $50,000. A medical examination later confirmed that
both twins died in the womb. Reed still awaits trial. In a more high-profile case, Purvi Patel, a woman of color from Indiana, was
convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison
in 2015 after prosecutors said that she had taken abortion-inducing
drugs and later miscarried, violating a decades-old state law against
feticide. Patel was released from prison in 2016 after the feticide
conviction was
overturned. In other cases, women have been prosecuted for the
accidental deaths of their children. In 2011, for example, a black woman
named
Raquel Nelson was convicted of homicide
after her 4-year-old son was struck by a drunk driver as Nelson’s
family crossed the street. Prosecutors argued that Nelson was negligent
for not using a crosswalk. Experts and women’s rights groups say the women in many
of these situations are being judged harshly for failing to meet social
expectations of how mothers and pregnant women should behave. These judgments happen to women of various races, and
black women and women of color aren’t the only ones who have faced
prosecution. But the use of the justice system can be especially fraught
for black women, who face gendered as well as racialized assumptions
about what a “good mother” looks like. Stereotypes of the
“welfare queen,”
often rendered as a single black mother unfairly forcing the government
to care for her children, remain a powerful trope in discussions of
social policy. Black single mothers also continue to be shamed and
ridiculed, most notably by politicians, largely due to assumptions that a
single mother’s children will suffer under her care. But black women are also shamed for decisions not to have children. Activists involved in
black anti-abortion advocacy,
for example, argue that black women are single-handedly committing
“black genocide” by getting abortions, and that the “least safe place
for black baby in America is in the womb.” And
many of these issues are further highlighted in political debates over
issues like abortion, with reproductive rights groups arguing that some
politicians are more interested in regulating women’s actions than they
are in helping the conditions that affect low-income women and children.
Advocates say Jones’s story is a troubling sign of what could be in Alabama’s future
Marshae Jones’s indictment comes just over a month after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey
signed the strictest anti-abortion law in the country, effectively banning almost all abortions in the state and not including exceptions for rape and incest. That law is not set to take effect until November, and
Jones was not charged under it. Still, reproductive rights groups say it
is alarming that she was indicted, pointing to the case as a potential
sign of what will happen to women, especially low-income women of color
in the state, once the law is in effect. “Marshae Jones is being charged with manslaughter for
being pregnant and getting shot while engaging in an altercation with a
person who had a gun,” Amanda Reyes of the Yellowhammer Fund, an
abortion rights advocacy group,
said in a statement.
“Tomorrow, it will be another black woman, maybe for having a drink
while pregnant. And after that, another, for not obtaining adequate
prenatal care.” Reproductive justice groups argue that these issues also
reflect a tragic reality in several states with highly restrictive
abortion laws, many of which struggle with high rates of poverty, high
maternal and infant deaths, and wide racial disparities in infant and
maternal mortality. This is also the case in Alabama, which is the
sixth poorest state in the nation, where black women are
roughly three times more likely than white women to die during or shortly after childbirth. In 2014,
fewer than half of the state’s 67 counties had hospitals that offered obstetrics services, limiting many rural women’s ability to access pre- and postnatal health care.
Reproductive rights advocates say Jones’s treatment shows
that women are still being punished and criminalized for things they
shouldn’t be, and that the system is failing them in too many ways.
“This what 2019 looks like for a pregnant woman of color without means
in a red state,” NARAL Pro-Choice America president Ilyse Hogue
tweeted on Wednesday, along with a link to a media story about Jones. “This is now.”
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/6/27/18761652/marshae-jones-alabama-misscarriage-shooting-indictment
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/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
