Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Falling down is a CRIME

Perhaps I over-stated it. But I'd still wager you will be shocked by this article as much as I was.

I've expressed my irritation over my own country's abortion laws in the past, and expressed my admiration that the United States retains legal abortions, despite the attacks against this right - such as South Dakota's bill that could essentially legalise the killing of abortion doctors, and Utah's criminalisation of miscarriage. But the fact that a pregnant woman could actually be held for taking a tumble, and then expressing some previous concerns with a healthcare professional, is really disturbing. Does the father get held as well for distressing her enough that she took that tumble? (Guess.) This woman was only released because she was still in her second trimester, not in her third as had been thought. Not because it was ridiculous to arrest her in the first place, oh no.

American women have to keep a close eye on these bills, write to their representatives, and support their local Reproductive Rights groups in whatever way they can. It is a massive concern that pregnant women are actually being held for discussing their reproductive decisions after an accident.

I just wanted to bring this article to everyone's attention. I'm the sort of person who likes to think of feminist issues as continually improving, but things like this really remind me that in matters of healthcare and reproductive rights, we still have a long way to go - and if we're not careful, society could end up backsliding.



(Thanks to @neilhimself for linking the article on Twitter, and @kandinthehunter for retweeting it.)

2 comments:

  1. Mmm, doesn't matter if we pay attention to the bills or petition our government officials or anything really. They've already done numerous things to a plethora of negatives.

    I mean when I saw the video of the man handing the government officials a petition and begging him to listen to their pleas and the whole table just got up and filed out....

    Yeah, I got nothing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am genuinely finding American politics more and more disturbing. I worry that the status quo will be impossible to change with the top 1% essentially owning the government, society becoming more and more uneven and so on.

    Although I hear a non-republican judge just won a seat in a very republican area.... while that in itself is reassuring, it's still a worry, because the Democrats are still pretty right-wing, and are still under a lot of sway from that top 1% of society.

    I mean really, you just start to feel like there's nothing as can be done, trying is exhausting, and that it's much less effort to just pretend it's not happening.

    ReplyDelete