Two pain pills. [View all]

[kpete]

Troubling number of women denied constitutional rights based on pregnancy

In the first study of its kind, to be published on Tuesday, researchers from the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) identified 413 criminal and civil cases across 44 states involving the arrests, detentions and equivalent deprivations of pregnant women’s liberty between 1973 and 2005. NAWP said that it is aware of a further 250 cases since 2005. Both figures are likely to be underestimates, it said.

The report, which will appear in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, found that women were denied a wide range of basic human rights, including the right to life, liberty, equal protection and due process of law “based solely on their pregnancy status”.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/14/troubling-number-of-women-denied-constitutional-rights-due-to-pregnancy/

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Jamie Lynn Russell: One Pregnant Woman's Tragic Death Reveals the Human Cost of Devaluing Women
by Farah Diaz-Tello, National Advocates for Pregnant Women
January 14, 2013 - 9:34am



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Jamie Lynn Russell was 33 years old when she went to an emergency room in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma in such debilitating pain that she was unable to move. Because her excruciating pain prevented her from lying down for an examination, hospital staff labeled her "noncompliant," and called the police. The police discovered that she had two pain pills that weren't hers. Still in pain, she was released by the hospital as "fit to incarcerate," arrested for drug possession, and taken to jail, where she died two hours later from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.

Two pain pills.

Much of the initial response to the case centered around the actions of the hospital, which likely amount to malpractice. But we must avoid making the mistake that the hospital did: looking at individual actions when they are merely symptoms of deeper, deadlier problems.

Jamie's needless death shows us where our priorities lie, misplaced: chasing down minor drug offenders in service of a failed war on drugs is more important that human life and dignity; women's health is not taken seriously and "noncompliance" is cause for punishment.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/08/11/refusingcsection-child-abuse
The tragedy of her death once again disproves the myth that women never need abortions and that "modern technology and science" have eliminated maternal mortality.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/10/19/163239925/life-of-the-mother-never-a-reason-for-abortion-congressman-says

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the rest:
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/01/11/dehumanizing-pregnant-women-leads-to-real-loss-life
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/15/criminalisation-pregnancy-women-study