I came across a story just a few moments ago. A woman in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania was jailed for getting pregnant, then died in prison due a lack of medical attention. There’s no need to wax poetic on the injustice, she was denied not only a woman’s right to be pregnant, but herhuman rights altogether.
You see, getting pregnant violated her probation and as a result she was jailed. While she was in jail she developed advanced pneumonia and even though she pleaded with the guards for weeks, she went ignored and died from the sickness, both her and her baby died from medical neglect.
Honestly, this is something I expect to hear in a country whose code of laws are stuck in the 13th century, not the United States.
What is equally disturbing as her medical neglect, is how she violated her probation: by getting pregnant. Pregnant, for Christ’s sake. A woman has her reproductive rights, and I don’t know how there is a place in this country that halts reproductive rights and makes getting pregnant a crime. In the most unfortunate of circumstances this woman was denied her basic human rights of reproduction and medical treatment.
I’m going to stop here only because I’m getting more infuriated and less coherent with my thoughts. Jesus.
I can imagine a situation in which a woman could be required not to get pregnant as a condition of probation: picture a woman whose several children have been removed from her custody because of physical or sexual abuse or severe neglect or Munchausen by proxy. The state might move to prevent that woman from creating more victims.
Is her right to bear children more sacred than the rights of those children to live in a safe, caring home?
NanuqFC
In a Time of Universal Deceit, TELLING the TRUTH Is a Revolutionary Act. ~ George Orwell