burton, prochoice, prolife, pregnant, civil rights, feminism,I'm not entirely certain I can discuss this intelligently right now as I am incredibly angry about this, but I'll give it a try, because apparently we really need to have this discussion.
Who Gets to Make Medical Decisions for Pregnant Women? from Daily Kos, written by By Dahlia Ward, State Strategist, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project
Imagine this — you're the busy mother of two small kids with another one on the way. This pregnancy has been fraught with complications. During a medical exam, your doctor orders bed rest for the remainder of your pregnancy. You explain that you can't possibly stay in bed for four months with two small children (!). The doctor insists. You say you want to get a second opinion. The doctor refuses and goes to court and gets a court order mandating your confinement in the hospital for the remainder of your pregnancy.
Sound crazy? Well something along these lines happened to Samantha Burton, a mother of two in Florida who was 25 weeks pregnant when she was hospitalized against her will due to pregnancy complications. When she requested a transfer to another hospital so she could get a second opinion, the state refused because it was not in the fetus' "best interests at the time." After three days in state-mandated confinement, Ms. Burton lost the baby.
This follows on the heels of a case in New Jersey where a woman lost custody of her child after refusing a C-section during delivery of said child. (She gave birth vaginally, the child was born healthy, and they took the child away anyway.)
We have apparently reached the point in this country where pregnant women are second class citizens, denied the rights they would have if they were weren't pregnant, or if they were men. Right now, in this country, we allow paranoid schizophrenics to refuse treatment, knowing full well their refusal will, most certainly, result in harm to them (homelessness, etc.), and could possibly result in harm to others (most paranoid schizophrenics are completely harmless, but there are those few), but we allow them that right anyway. Why? Because despite their illness, paranoid schizophrenics are adults, and we allow adults control over their bodies, even if the result of that control is needless suffering and death. Unless those adults are pregnant women, in which case, they aren't even allowed the necessary information to make a good decision.
The cases involving Ms. Burton and the New Jersey woman prove something I, and others, have said all along: prolifers only care about children in the womb. Once those children are out in the world, they don't give a shit. The New Jersey woman's child was healthy. There was no reason to take the child away from her. That action was purely punitive- punishment for the mere woman who dared to defy the great doctor. Ms. Burton's case is even more disgusting.
Think about the choices Ms. Burton faced. Bed rest means bed rest. You are allowed a 10 minute shower once a day, doctor visits and nothing else. How could anyone possibly even keep two small children clean and safe from bed? Four months of bed rest for Ms. Burton meant a dangerous situation for her two children. I don't know if Ms. Burton worked, but if she did, four months of bed rest would most likely mean four months without a paycheck, if she even had a job to go back to. What were her children supposed to eat? Where were they supposed to live?
Ms. Burton was in a terrible position- or maybe not. She never did get her second opinion. Assuming bed rest was necessary, she was in the worst position I can imagine. She could either protect her two born children, or protect the not-yet-born child. That is a decision I can't imagine having to make, but it was Ms. Burton's decision. No one else's. Not her doctor's, not the judge's, not mine, not yours, not anyone's. Hers.
Women do not become children, incompetent or slaves the moment they become pregnant. They remain competant adults. Or they did, until the prolife lobby took over our legal system. Now, if you get pregnant, remember: your body is not your own, your choices are not your own, your life is not your own. It belongs to someone else. And they don't care about you. You're just a vessel, not a human being.
