Texas GOP Takes Drastic Measures To Defund Planned Parenthood
Laura Bassett First Posted: 06/28/11 03:49 PM ET Updated: 06/28/11 03:59 PM ET
WASHINGTON -- In an attempt to defund Planned Parenthood without breaking any federal rules, Texas lawmakers passed two measures this month that will decimate the state's family planning program and result in nearly 300,000 women losing access to cancer and diabetes screenings.
In early June, Rick Perry, Texas' Republican governor, signed a budget bill that reduced the state's family planning funding from $111 million to just $37 million. Then on Monday, state lawmakers passed a measure that forces the Texas Health Department to dole out the remaining funds using a tiered priority system, in which Planned Parenthood is at the very bottom.
"It doesn't completely defund us, but it puts the agency in a position where they have to put us third in line for the money," said Yvonne Gutierrez, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of South Texas. "And it's not only us that's in the third tier -- it's all the traditional family planning providers that don't provide comprehensive care, many in rural areas. So it's the hard to reach population that's really being affected by this."
Texas Planned Parenthood offices have two avenues through which they receive state and federal money: the Women's Health Program (WHP), which is funded by Medicaid, and the state family planning program, which is funded by the Title X federal grant program. In addition to putting private providers like Planned Parenthood last in line for Title X funds, GOP lawmakers inserted language into the new Medicaid bill that will prevent WHP money from going to any entity that provides abortions or is affiliated with an abortion provider.
Because Planned Parenthood corporately separated its abortion services from its family planning services in 2005, every abortion it performs in Texas is paid for privately by the patient. But the Health Department will now have to define the word "affiliate" to determine whether Planned Parenthood's abortion and family planning services are closely related enough to disqualify it from state Medicaid funding.
"Anti-choice lobbyists have spent the entire year confusing the facts," said Peter J. Durkin, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, in an email to HuffPost. "These groups pressured lawmakers to de-fund Planned Parenthood by muddling conversations about family planning programs with false accusations that they subsidize abortion care. There is absolutely no legitimacy to their claims – and they know it."
Nearly half of the 120,000 low-income Texas women who use the WHP for basic health care, birth control and cancer screenings do so through a Planned Parenthood clinic, so the Health and Human Services Commission's ruling could be a devastating blow to family planning.
"If they're gonna kick Planned Parenthood out of the program, then all of these women going to a Planned Parenthood clinic are gonna have to go to another provider -- and these providers are already operating at capacity," Gutierrez told HuffPost.
Further, if Texas breaks federal Medicaid rules by discriminating against Planned Parenthood, the state could risk nearly $150 million in federal family planning funds.
Gutierrez said the Texas chapter is "encouraged" by the ruling in Indiana and plans to launch a similar challenge in court.
But a spokesperson for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission said she believes the Texas version could stand. "Our attorney general believes that we have the right to limit how those tax dollars are spent," she said.
Women Should Get Free Birth Control, HHS-Backed Group Urges
Birth-control pills are among the contraceptives that could be offered at no cost to Americans. Creative Commons photo by flickr.com/nateone
By: Jason Kane July 19, 2011 at 6:30 PM EDT
All U.S. women should have access to free birth control as part of the 2010 health care reform law, the Institute of Medicine recommended Tuesday, along with eight other suggestions for preventive health services.
Commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services to identify "critical gaps" in the agency's list of preventive services, the highly influential IOM report recommends that all U.S.-approved birth control methods be covered by insurers. That includes the controversial "morning-after" or "Plan B" pill that is considered by some to be a form of abortion because the woman takes it in the hours after sexual intercourse. The reform law requires insurance plans to cover services on the HHS list, meaning the adoption of the recommendation would make the pill co-pay free for "all women of reproductive capacity."
Planned Parenthood immediately applauded the report. In a statement, Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the announcement will make life easier for "millions of women, especially young women, struggle every day to afford prescription birth control."
"Today's recommendation brings us a step closer to ensuring that all newly insured women under the health care reform law will have access to prescription birth control without out-of-pocket expenses. This would be a tremendous stride forward for women's health in this country."
Conservative groups cried foul, noting that the government will foot the bill for a large portion of the health care reform law and adoption of the IOM recommendation to cover the "morning-after pill" would "essentially would mandate coverage for abortion."
Jeanne Monahan, the director of the council's Center for Human Dignity, said in a statement that:
"[I]f HHS includes these mandates, the conscience rights of millions of Americans will be violated. HHS should focus on items and services that prevent actual diseases, and not include controversial services just to placate the abortion industry."
The IOM committee identified diseases and conditions that are more common or more serious in women than in men -- or those that might require specific interventions for women. Women received special attention in the report because they require more preventive services than men and therefore pay more in out-of-pocket costs that should be covered under the reform law, the authors say.
"The eight services we identified are necessary to support women's optimal health and well-being Each recommendation stands on a foundation of evidence supporting its effectiveness," said Linda Rosenstock, the study's committee chair and dean of the University of California Los Angeles' School of Public Health. "If these are thought to be warranted (by HHS), we believe there should be a decrease in the barriers to what are proven to be evidence-based, effective procedures."
Here in detail are the eight IOM recommendations, with additional thoughts directly from the group for several of the more complex suggestions:
¦ Contraceptive methods and counseling to prevent unintended pregnancies: "To reduce the rate of unintended pregnancies, which accounted for almost half of pregnancies in the U.S. in 2001, the report urges that HHS consider adding the full range of Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods as well as patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity. Women with unintended pregnancies are more likely to receive delayed or no prenatal care and to smoke, consume alcohol, be depressed, and experience domestic violence during pregnancy. Unintended pregnancy also increases the risk of babies being born pre-term or at a low birth weight, both of which raise their chances of health and developmental problems."
¦ Counseling on sexually transmitted infections
¦ Counseling and screening for HIV
¦ Human papillomavirus (HPV) testing as part of cervical cancer screening for women over 30: "Deaths from cervical cancer could be reduced by adding DNA testing for HPV, the virus that can cause this form of cancer, to the Pap smears that are part of the current guidelines for women's preventive services. Cervical cancer can be prevented through vaccination, screening, and treatment of precancerous lesions and HPV testing increases the chances of identifying women at risk."
¦ Yearly well-woman preventive care visits to obtain recommended services
¦ Screening for gestational diabetes: "The United States has the highest rates of gestational diabetes in the world; it complicates as many as 10 percent of U.S. pregnancies each year. HHS should consider screening for gestational diabetes in pregnant women between 24 and 28 weeks of gestation and at the first prenatal visit for pregnant women identified to be at high risk for diabetes. Women with gestational diabetes face a 7.5-fold increased risk for the development of Type 2 diabetes after delivery and are more likely to have infants that require delivery by cesarean section and have health problems after birth."
¦ Screening and counseling to detect and prevent interpersonal and domestic violence
¦ Lactation counseling and equipment to promote breast-feeding: "Although lactation counseling is already part of the HHS guidelines, the report recommends comprehensive support that includes coverage of breast pump rental fees as well as counseling by trained providers to help women initiate and continue breast-feeding. Evidence links breast-feeding to lower risk for breast and ovarian cancers; it also reduces children's risk for sudden infant death syndrome, asthma, gastrointestinal infections, respiratory diseases, leukemia, ear infections, obesity, and Type 2 diabetes."
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will make the final call on whether to adopt the recommendations - possibly as early as Aug. 1. Immediately after its release, Sebelius called the report "historic" and "based on science and existing literature." She said that "before today, guidelines regarding women's health and preventive care did not exist."
[img]The IOM noted that women with unplanned pregnancies were more likely to put off or neglect prenatal care and to smoke, drink or experience depression. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)[/img]
Andrew Seaman Reuters July 19, 2011, 3:03 p.m.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. medical advisory group recommended providing women free birth control and other preventive health services under the nation's healthcare overhaul.
The Institute of Medicine report, commissioned by the Obama administration, recommended that all U.S.-approved birth control methods -- including the "morning after pill," taken shortly after intercourse to forestall pregnancy -- be added to the federal government's list of preventive health services.
"The evidence supporting contraception is quite straightforward. It works," said Dr. Alfred Berg, a member of IOM's Committee on Preventive Services for Women.
The IOM noted that women with unplanned pregnancies were more likely to put off or neglect prenatal care and to smoke, drink or experience depression.
The recommendation to add birth control is a big gain for organizations like the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Planned Parenthood, but is likely to stoke opposition from conservative and religious groups.
"I'm really taken and pleased with the concept of making contraceptive methods available to women in general," said Dr. James Martin Jr., ACOG's president. "It's just a shame that so many pregnancies in this country are unplanned and unwanted."
"Covering birth control without co-pays is one of the most important steps we can take to prevent unintended pregnancy and keep women and children healthy," said Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America in a statement.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has urged the Department of Health and Human Services to exclude birth control as a service, and strongly opposes [below] IOM's recommendations.
"Without sufficient legal protection for rights of conscience, such a mandate would force all men, women and children to carry health coverage that violates the deeply-held moral and religious convictions of many," said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the bishops' conference.
IOM also recommended free screening for gestational diabetes, testing for human papillomavirus (HPV) in women over 30, counseling for HIV and sexually transmitted infections, lactation counseling, screening for domestic violence and yearly wellness visits.
Health and Human Services has the final say over what services will be offered. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called the IOM report "historic."
The IOM is an independent, nonprofit organization that works outside of government to provide health-policy advice.
Research suggests the public would be supportive of birth control being added to the list of services.
A Thomson Reuters/NPR survey in May found 76.6 percent of respondents believed private insurance plans, without government assistance, should cover some or all costs associated with birth control pills, such as Yasmin, the popular birth control pill from Bayer.
(Editing by Michele Gershberg, Steve Orlofsky and Tim Dobbyn)
Bishops' Pro-Life Chair Strongly Opposes Recommended Mandate for Birth Control, Sterilization in Private Health Plans
WASHINGTON, July 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, strongly opposed the recommendation of the Institute of Medicine that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate coverage of surgical sterilization and all FDA-approved birth control in private health insurance plans nationwide.
The full text of the statement follows:
I strongly oppose the Institute of Medicine's recommendation today that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate coverage of three particular practices in almost all private health plans: surgical sterilization; all FDA-approved birth control (including the IUD, "morning-after" pills, and the abortion-inducing drug Ella); and "education and counseling" promoting these among all "women of reproductive capacity."
Pregnancy is not a disease, and fertility is not a pathological condition to be suppressed by any means technically possible. The IOM report claims it would have good reason to recommend mandatory coverage for surgical abortions as well, if such a mandate were not prevented by law. But most Americans surely see that abortion is not healthy or therapeutic for unborn children, and has physical and mental health risks for women which can be extremely serious. I can only conclude that there is an ideology at work in these recommendations that goes beyond any objective assessment of the health needs of women and children.
The single largest abortion provider in the United States, Planned Parenthood, is celebrating the IOM's report. If the HHS does likewise and implements its recommendations, these controversial practices will be mandated for all insurance plans – public and private – without co-pay from anyone receiving them. The considerable cost of these practices will be paid by all who participate in health coverage, employers and employees alike, including those who conscientiously object to Planned Parenthood's agenda.
Without sufficient legal protection for rights of conscience, such a mandate would force all men, women and children to carry health coverage that violates the deeply-held moral and religious convictions of many. This new threat to conscience makes it especially critical for Congress to pass the "Respect for Rights of Conscience Act" introduced by Reps. Jeff Fortenberry and Dan Boren (HR 1179). I am writing to all members of Congress to urge their co-sponsorship.
The IOM missed an opportunity to promote better health care for women that is life-affirming and truly compassionate. I once again urge the Department of Health and Human Services to focus on the need of all Americans, including immigrants and the poor, for basic life-saving health coverage – not on mandating controversial elective practices in ways that undermine the good of women and children, the consciences of employers, employees and health plan providers, and the common good.
SOURCE U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities
Mary Baird, center, rests for a second between clients at her salon, the Hair Station. She gave up fried chicken, fried potatoes and greens cooked with ham hocks when her mother’s heart gave out. (Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles Times / August 3, 2011)
Reporting from Emporia, Va.— Every one of the 13 chairs at the Hair Station is occupied this afternoon by women getting a wash and set or soaking their tired feet. Their chatter is louder than the bubble-top dryers. Miss Janie has decided to eat a slice of mixed berry pie with ice cream and call it lunch; the bridesmaids at Mary Baird's daughter's wedding will be wearing short yellow dresses and cowboy boots.
You wouldn't know it from the cheerful talk, but this little Southern town has lately acquired a sad distinction: Women here are likely to die nearly a decade sooner than their counterparts less than 200 miles away.
Virginia has the widest longevity gap of any state: In Fairfax County, an upscale exurb of Washington, a woman on average can expect to live to age 84. Here in Greensville County, a three-hour drive down Interstate 95, she can expect to die by 75, according to research conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Smoking and obesity are greatly to blame, twin culprits with deep roots in rural Southern towns like this one, where about 5,000 people are served by two McDonald's and just one YMCA. (The Curves exercise salon across from the diner closed.)
People smoke and gain too much weight all across America; childhood obesity is First Lady Michelle Obama's signature cause. But here, the cost of a nation's bad habits is in evidence around every corner.
You'll find it in Mary Baird's bustling shop on Main Street and in her family legacy. One of the regulars in today is battling cancer. Most of the others have high blood pressure or diabetes, or are related to someone who does. Mary's brother, two sisters and her mother needed heart surgery before they hit 60.
"I'm 56 and holdin' my breath," she says in the back room mixing the color for Miss Janie's hair between bites of a tossed salad. She gave up fried chicken, fried potatoes and greens cooked with ham hocks when her mother's heart gave out. "I have never cooked food for my children with fat-backed meats and all that stuff."
"But that's the stuff that makes it good!" protests Miss Janie, 86, scraping the last of her berry pie lunch and declining to provide her last name because her feet hurt too much.
"Yeah," Mary agrees. "That's also the stuff that'll kill ya."
The health and prosperity boom that lifted northern Virginia bypassed parts of the rural South, leaving towns like Emporia with the charm of Mayberry and the challenges of Appalachia.
The cocktail peanut, a staple crop, is hailed with an annual festival. Some local ladies still start their sentences with, "I declare …" So many Emporians turned out for hot dogs and lemonade at Circuit Court Clerk Bobby Wrenn's annual Fourth of July party, they clogged up the sewer.
Yet for all of its quaint traditions, much here has changed in recent years and most of it has been stressful. Small farms and factories vanished, pushing unemployment to double digits well before the rest of the country crashed. The tobacco fields that were once the South's economic base are mostly gone, but not the habit; the smoking rate in this region is well above the rest of the state and nation. Deaths from cancer exceed the national average; lung cancer is the deadliest.
The numbers came as some surprise to many of the women interviewed on a sticky Friday afternoon as they lunched at the diner, waited tables or sat for a comb-out. Emporia, which has far more churches than bars and a high school where everybody knows everybody else, is a friendly place to live. But none of these women — comfortable or poor, black or white, insured or not — quarreled with the message the data carried: The very conventions that have defined them as Southern are costing some their golden years.
Outside Logan's Diner, four rocking chairs sit empty under a yellow-striped awning. It's too hot even to rock. Inside, the lunch special is fried trout with hush puppies and the bologna burger comes with a guaranteed 5-ounce slice.
Shirley Doyle, 75, and Jean Moss, 72, are at a table by the window. They are sisters who grew up on a farm in this county. Their mother was Jean's age when she died of diabetes; both women were diagnosed 15 years ago — it's hereditary. They put away the fry pan and lost more than 100 pounds between them. Jean cut her cigarettes to three a day.
"The only thing we fry anymore is chicken tenders. We broil and bake," Shirley says, pushing aside the rest of the BLT she ordered, mayo oozing out the edges. Jean left her hush puppies — deep-fried fingers of corn meal — on the plate.
That's how it goes here. Women tend to eat wiser, smoke less and exercise at least a little — after they get sick. Every conversion bucks culinary traditions that are deep and ever-present. There is always mac and cheese at grandma's house. You can get a fried pork chop for $1.59 at Logan's. Indeed, pork is as celebrated as the peanut, warranting an annual festival of its own. Some Southerners still talk of eating "every part of the pig but the squeal."
The diner closes at 2, and by 2:45 Melanie Barrett, who waited on Shirley and Jean, is almost through for the day. She eats an order of onion rings and heads out to the rocking chairs for a smoke. She is 33 years old. Her parents both died of diabetes — her mother at 54, her father at 57. She hasn't seen a doctor in years. Can't afford it. No health insurance.
"If you don't work at a factory or the prison, minimum wage is all there is," she says, referring to the state prison in Jarratt that is one of the area's biggest employers and one of the few local jobs that provides healthcare. "It's hard to get into those state doctors. You can call today and it could be two months before you see them."
Access to healthcare is a major hurdle in the rural South. One hospital serves Emporia, but most state-of-the-art treatment is a good 90 minutes away. Cancer care is imported from the Massey Cancer Center at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. A traveling oncologist and nurse diagnose patients and help primary care physicians carry out treatment plans.
A study in the works will ask local residents why they think the cancer rate is so high; outreach workers believe self-awareness can foster change. Emporians will tell you most people know what they're doing wrong — they're just stubborn. It's hard to defend eight Mountain Dews a day.
At Uptown Beauty Styling Salon a block off Main Street, owner Eletha Gillus steps out to pick up her 4-year-old daughter, Arica, before her afternoon appointments arrive. Time is short so they bring back McDonald's.
Eletha is raising her daughter differently than the way she was raised. She seasons with smoked turkey instead of ham hocks, watches the salt, no lard. She works out at the Y.
Her aim is to break the pattern of diabetes that killed her grandmother at 72, plagues her mother at 64 and was diagnosed in her aunt, just four months ago, at age 60.
"I don't know if it has to do with how we eat or the lack of exercise," she says.
The bad news from the life expectancy study was that women's vices are robbing them of valuable years. The good news is the data gathered over the last two decades showed that a community can change its stars. In Fulton, Ga., a woman's life expectancy grew from 75 to 80; in Yuma, Ariz., it shot from 77 to 84.
Eletha considers the prospect of better days for Emporia's next generation.
"I hope so," she says, optimistic but unconvinced, as her daughter dances by with a carton of fries.
Study: Healthful diet may be too costly for some Americans
Healthful eating may come at too high a price for some. A new study from the University of Washington found that the federal dietary guidelines unveiled last year may be too pricey for many Seattleites to adhere to.
By Roberto Daza Seattle Times staff reporter Originally published August 3, 2011 at 9:03 PM | Page modified August 3, 2011 at 11:33 PM
The staples of a healthful diet may come at too high a price — literally — for some Americans.
With the nation's revised federal dietary guidelines in mind, researchers at the University of Washington School of Public Health surveyed more than 1,000 King County residents on their eating habits and how much they spend to maintain them.
The researchers matched food consumption with prices at three of Washington's largest supermarket chains — Albertsons, Safeway and Quality Food Centers — and determined how much it would cost to swap out some of the sugar-laden and fatty foods for the fresh fruits, veggies and whole-grain breads pushed in the dietary guidelines.
Among the findings of the study, released Thursday:
People who ate the most junk food paid the least for groceries but were the furthest from meeting the recommended intake of healthful nutrients. They also exceeded the recommended levels of saturated fat and sugars, which have been linked to chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Those who spent the most on groceries ate the healthiest, coming closest to meeting the dietary guidelines.
The latest guidelines, released last year by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, focus on balancing calories with physical activity and getting enough of the nutrients that Americans generally consume in inadequate quantities, including potassium, fiber, vitamin D and calcium. Revised every five years, the guidelines form the basis of school-meal programs, Meals on Wheels for the elderly and other nutrition programs.
Participants in the study had an average daily intake of 2,800 milligrams of potassium, 700 milligrams short of what the new guidelines recommend. Buying enough fresh fruit to bridge that gap alone would cost the average person an additional $380 a year, the study found.
Bridging the gap in the average intakes of vitamin D and fiber would add about $250 a year.
"It shouldn't cost more to eat a nutritious diet," said Pablo Monsivais, lead author of the study, which was published in the August issue of the journal, Health Affairs. "For many families it's still too costly to build their diets around fresh vegetables and fruit."
Experts add that when the pocketbook is stretched, it's usually fresh produce and other healthful foods that are first to be scratched from household shopping lists.
"We need to find ways to make necessary nutrients available and affordable," Monsivais said, adding that while prices for items like fruits and vegetables have increased over the last few years, foods high in added sugars, sodium and saturated fats have seen a far more modest increase.
To address this disparity, the UW researchers are recommending education campaigns to lead consumers to low-cost but good-tasting and readily available sources of nutrients.
"Dried prunes are great sources of potassium, but unless you launch a major PR campaign to increase their popularity, no one's going to eat them," Monsivais said.
There is also the need to tell consumers how to find the cheapest source of nutrients, he said. Nectarines, for example, are a great source of potassium but are more expensive than bananas, which are not only rich in potassium but are a good source of calcium, too.
The study also recommends a careful examination of programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, to see if they are consistent with federal nutritional guidelines.
Monsivais is quick to point out that some private and nonprofit businesses already are helping low-income Americans meet these dietary recommendations. At some farmers markets, for examples, shoppers can use their SNAP card — a plastic debit card that can be used at participating retailers — to buy fresh meat, bread and produce.
"People on low incomes should have the same access to good, fresh food as anyone," said Chris Curtis, director of the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance, a nonprofit that oversees seven farmers markets in Seattle, all of which have been accepting SNAP since 1994. "It's a way to increase revenue, but it's also the principle."
Of the 41 farmers markets in King County (18 of them in Seattle), more than half accept SNAP cards. Within Seattle, Pike Place Market is one of only three that doesn't accept SNAP cards, but it expects to in the next several months. The county, too, is working toward increasing participation in SNAP and other federal nutrition programs.
"This is great for the people that grow our food and the people that need it," Monsavais said. "It's a step in the right direction."
Roberto Daza: 206-464-3195 or rdaza@seattletimes.com
Is Locking Up Pregnant Women the New Cure for State Financial Woes and Mental Health Problems?
by Lynn Paltrow, National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW)
March 30, 2011 - 4:05pm
In December of 2010, Bei Bei Shuai, a 34-year-old pregnant woman living in Indiana, attempted to end her own life. She did so in one of the slowest and most painful ways possible: she consumed rat poison. With help from friends who intervened, however, she made it to a hospital and survived. The premature newborn she delivered by undergoing cesarean surgery did not. An Indiana prosecutor’s response has been to charge her with the crimes of murder (defined to include viable fetuses) and feticide (defined to include ending a human pregnancy at any stage). She has been arrested, denied bail, and will, unless bail is granted, be imprisoned for as long as her case proceeds through the court system.
National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), .. http://www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/ .. through Indiana-based counsel Kathrine Jack, is working with Indiana defense attorney Linda Pence to secure Ms. Shuai’s freedom and to defend the basic idea that when the person suffering from mental illness, severe depression, or any other health problem happens to be a pregnant woman, she does not lose her right to be treated like other human beings experiencing the same problems.
Pregnant women are not immune from the mental illness or severe depression that leads some people to attempt to end their lives. Indiana, like virtually every other state in the country, addresses suicide and attempted suicide as a public health issue, not a crime. Prosecutors simply may not decide that a suicide attempt is a public health issue for everyone except pregnant women. Moreover, there is wide consensus that subjecting pregnant women to special criminal penalties does not work. Rather, it undermines legitimate interests in maternal, fetal, and child health by stigmatizing pregnant women and by making them vulnerable to punishment if they seek help of any kind.
If this prosecution is allowed to go forward, the law will not just apply to one desperate pregnant woman who attempted suicide by swallowing rat poison – it will create legal precedent that makes every woman criminally liable for the outcome of her pregnancy. This precedent would mean that women who undergo significant risks to their lives and health by bringing forth life, sometimes undergoing major surgery to do so, may then be arrested as criminals if they are unable to guarantee the birth of a live and healthy baby. In addition, if Ms. Shuai’s prosecution is upheld, it leaves no doubt that women who intentionally end their pregnancies will go to jail as murderers if Roe is ever overturned.
This story and the heart-rending video .. http://www.theindychannel.com/news/27215238/detail.html .. that accompanies it, Attorney Rips Prosecutor In Infant Rat Poison Death, Pence: Prosecuting Pregnant Women 'Bad For Babies', provides a glimpse of the jailhouse dehumanization that awaits pregnant women who become the targets of state feticide and murder laws that have defined eggs, embryos, and fetuses as legally separate from pregnant women.
Women in Alabama may also look forward to such dehumanization. There, legislators suggest that locking up pregnant women, depriving them of treatment and separating them from their families is the right way to address drug dependency problems.
Alabama House Bill 8 .. http://e-lobbyist.com/gaits/AL/HB8 .. would amend the state’s chemical endangerment law, which was originally designed to deter people who run methamphetamine laboratories from bringing children to such dangerous locations. HB 8 would define the word “child” to include “an unborn child in utero at any stage of development,” and make the law applicable to a pregnant woman who uses any amount of a “controlled substance,” prescribed or otherwise, at any point in her pregnancy, and whether or not she knew she was pregnant at the time.
In other words, the bill would allow prosecutors to treat a pregnant woman as if she herself is an illegal drug lab.
Alabama, like most states, makes it a crime to possess illegal drugs, not to use or be addicted to them. This is consistent with state and federal efforts to encourage people to seek help for drug problems. HB 8, however, creates a gender-based law that singles out pregnant women for criminal punishment.
To be clear, HB 8 will not increase pregnant women’s access to treatment or care. Instead, it will increase the number of pregnant women and new mothers in Alabama’s notoriously horrific jails and prisons. And wait there is more! According to the fiscal impact statement that accompanies the bill: This bill could increase receipts to the State General Fund from fines, increase receipts to the State General Fund, county general funds and other funds to which court costs are deposited. In other words, because pregnant women arrested under this law will be required to pay fines, court fees and other costs, Alabama claims locking up pregnant women and new mothers will be a money-making proposition for the state.
The prosecution in Indiana and the proposed law in Alabama both fly in the face of medical and public health recommendations regarding the most effective and appropriate ways to respond to suicide attempts and drug-dependency disorders. That these states believe there is value, financial or otherwise, in locking up pregnant women with these problems is stark evidence of how little, in fact, they value pregnant women and the children they purport to be protecting. http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/03/30/locking-pregnant-women-cure-state-financial-woes-mental-health-problems
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Stillbirth mum up for murder June 26, 2011
If a woman takes a drug and her unborn baby dies, is she a killer? That's a question now before courts in the US, writes Ed Pilkington.
Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.
Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit - though there is no evidence that drug abuse contributed to the baby's death - they charged her with the ''depraved-heart murder'' of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.
Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby but her case is not an isolated one. Across the US prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals. Advertisement: Story continues below
''Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws,'' Lynn Paltrow, of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women, said.
''It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights.''
Bei Bei Shuai, 34, has spent the past three months in prison in Indianapolis charged with murdering her baby. On December 23 she tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her.
Shuai survived, but she was 33 weeks' pregnant and her baby, to whom she gave birth a week after the suicide attempt and whom she called Angel, died after four days. In March, Shuai was charged with murder and attempted foeticide and she has been in custody since without the offer of bail.
In Alabama, at least 40 cases have been brought under the state's ''chemical endangerment'' law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes.
Amanda Kimbrough has been ensnared by the law in a different way. During her pregnancy her foetus was diagnosed with possible Down syndrome and doctors suggested she consider a termination. Kimbrough declined because she opposes abortion.
The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and lived just 19 minutes.
Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with ''chemical endangerment'' of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy - a claim she has denied.
''That shocked me, it really did,'' Kimbrough said. ''I had lost a child; that was enough.''
She now awaits an appeal ruling from the higher courts in Alabama, which, if she loses, will see her begin a 10-year jail sentence. ''I'm just living one day at a time, looking after my three other kids,'' she said. ''They say I'm a criminal - how do
I answer that? I'm a good mother.''
Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception. In Gibbs's case defence lawyers have argued before Mississippi's highest court that her prosecution makes no sense. Under Mississippi law it is a crime for any person except the mother to try to cause an abortion.
''If it's not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is,'' Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.
McDuff said he hoped the Gibbs prosecution was an isolated example. ''I hope it's not a trend that's going to catch on,'' he said. ''To charge a woman with murder because of something she did during pregnancy is really unprecedented and quite extreme.''
The wave of “tea party” republicans who swept to massive wins all over the country in the last election is “coming home to roost” (for lack of a better term). We see it up close and personal in Wisconsin with Scott Walkers war on labor and education, now it is popping up all over the country like a very bad case of acne.
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