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niyad

(112,434 posts)
Fri May 8, 2015, 12:43 PM May 2015

There Are No Abortion Cakes

There Are No Abortion Cakes

If CEOs are worried that their LGBT employees won’t be treated as equals in Indiana, they should show as much concern for their pregnant and potentially pregnant employees.
Katha Pollitt


Thousands of opponents rally outside the Indiana State House after passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, March 28, 2015. (AP/Doug McSchooler)

It’s no news that support for abortion rights is stagnant while gay rights become ever more popular. Two stories out of Indiana illustrate the diverging fortunes of these two crucial progressive causes. When Governor Mike Pence signed his state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), permitting secular businesses to refuse to serve LGBT people on religious grounds, there was an immediate furor. Conventions threatened to relocate. The CEOs of Angie’s List and Salesforce, both Indiana-based businesses, signed an open letter criticizing the law. A wide range of business leaders, celebrities, and honchos spoke out, including the heads of Apple, Walmart, Yelp, NASCAR—NASCAR!—and the NCAA. The governors of Connecticut, Washington and New York banned state-funded travel to Indiana, as did the mayors of Washington, DC; Denver; and San Francisco. On Twitter, #BoycottIndiana became popular enough to spawn a backlash against trendy blue-state liberals who had probably never even been to the state and knew nothing about it. “LGBT people and equality allies live and work in this state too, and right now they need our support and our presence more than ever,” wrote Kristen Clodfelter in Salon. As has been noted, the part of the state that would suffer most from a a boycott is the cash-starved Democratic stronghold of Indianapolis, which has a local ordinance protecting LGBT people from discrimination; the Republicans who run state government would be thrilled to see the city smoldering in ruins.
. . . . . .

Contrast Governor Pence’s quick retreat on RFRA with last week’s other big Indiana story: Purvi Patel’s twenty-year sentence for feticide and child neglect. Patel, 33, who lived with her conservative Hindu parents and hid her pregnancy from them out of shame, says she had a miscarriage that resulted in a still birth; when she started to bleed heavily she went to the hospital and dropped the dead fetus in a dumpster along the way. Based on some text messages between Patel and a friend, the prosecutor claimed she had self-aborted with pills bought on the Internet; based on a discredited test, he argued the fetus was born alive. That Patel could be convicted both of killing a fetus and neglecting a child, which makes no sense at all, shows how determined prosecutors were to send her away.

Back in 2009, when the state feticide law under which Patel was convicted was amended to increase penalties, its pro-life backers insisted its purpose was to protect pregnant women from violent male partners and other criminals; it would never be used against women themselves. Patel is the first woman to be convicted and sentenced under the feticide law. But she is not the first woman to be charged under Indiana’s feticide law: that was Bei Bei Shuai, who tried to kill herself by swallowing rat poison when her lover abandoned her late in pregnancy, and delivered a baby who died after four days. Shuai was charged with murder and attempted feticide and spent over a year in jail before accepting a plea bargain.


. . . . .

It’s time for progressives who rallied against the Indiana RFRA to show the same energy and conviction and urgency in support of women’s reproductive rights. At least thirty-eight states have feticide laws, after all—this is not an issue for just one state. (Consider, too, that about 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage.) If CEOs are concerned, rightly, that their LGBT employees be treated as equals in Indiana, they should show as much concern for their pregnant and potentially pregnant employees. The same RFRA laws that open the door to discrimination against LGBT people lay behind the Supreme Court’s infamous Hobby Lobby decision, which permits business owners to use religion to deny their employees health insurance coverage for birth control.

I understand that same-sex marriage and reproductive rights are different: marriage is about love, and abortion is about freedom. There are no abortion cakes.********* But freedom is a bedrock American value, even when it’s for women.********

Isn’t it?

http://www.thenation.com/article/203809/there-are-no-abortion-cakes

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