American women are offered 12 weeks of unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, which exempts companies with fewer than 50 paid employees, but in 2011, only 11 percent of private sector workers and 17 percent of public workers reported that they had access to paid maternity leave through their employer. And for first-time mothers, only about half can take paid leave when they give birth.

At the same time that working women in the U.S. lack a benefit widely available across the globe, almost 50 percent of families had two working parents in 2010, and 26 percent of households were headed by single parents. Without guaranteed paid maternity leave, many of these working women face significant financial hardship by having to choose between their paycheck and their families.

Women are forced to put their careers and financial future at risk simply because they want to have children. During their pregnancy, they face being fired unfairly or not being able to properly care for themselves. They should not have to worry about making ends meet without paid maternity leave on top of that.

[...] Morris and Leeneeka Bell, who says she was fired by the Emergency Communications Center after her pregnancy left her on bed rest, announced their plans to file a lawsuit after the EEOC finding. Their attorney, Lisa Millican, says this is a clear-cut case of discrimination.

OK, so about that “being fired unfairly,” thingy:

(Reuters) – More than three decades after Congress passed a law trying to protect pregnant women in the workplace, discrimination is still widespread and needs to be combated with publicity and clearer guidelines, according to testimony Wednesday at a federal hearing.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s legal counsel, Peggy Mastroianni, said the agency had resolved 52,000 pregnancy cases since 2001, with $150.5 million paid out in damages.

Discrimination against pregnant women includes firing, forced leave without pay, being denied a place to pump breast milk and being barred from some work, witnesses told the five-member EEOC panel at a hearing on the issue.

Decades after the passage of the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, discrimination ranges from the shop floor to the executive suite, with sexual stereotyping a major factor. It is found in every state, but is more likely to hit women in low-income jobs, they said.

[...]The Pregnancy Discrimination Act forbids discrimination by employers based on pregnancy, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments and promotions. Under the law, pregnancy is considered a temporarily disabling condition.

Yep, and you thought the so-called “war on women,” was just about birth control?

Two former Fulton County 911 operator trainees plan to sue the Georgia county, claiming they were fired for being pregnant.

One of the women secretly recorded a conversation she said she had with the director of the Emergency Communications Center, during which she asked for her job back after being fired.

Que'ana Morris & Leeneeka Bell said they are going to sue Fulton Co. after they say they were terminated for being pregnant.

In the recording obtained by ABC News, a person identified as department director Angela Barrett repeatedly refers to Que’ana Morris’ “situation” as the reason for her firing.

[...] Morris says in the two months before she was fired, she missed 16 days of work on doctor’s orders over complications with her pregnancy. She says she had permission to miss those days for medical reasons, and that it only became a problem after she was already fired.

I don’t know, but this seems like all types of wrong to me. What’s next, people getting fired for being a certain race? I know, I know, I know: something like that will never happen here in this country; but, this firing pregnant women thing is just ridiculous. But hey, maybe it’s a Georgia thing. According to another recent story, it’s okay for a cop to kick a pregnant women in the stomach.

The post Workplace Discrimination: Black Women Fired For Being Pregnant (VIDEO) appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

Now, clearly to any rationally thinking mind, it is absurd to suggest anything as ridiculous as the aforementioned. But, don’t tell that to South Carolina State Senator Kevin Bryant, who argues that it is the unborn fetus conceived in an act of rape or incestuous relationship who is the real “victim,” and not its would-be-mother, Yes, I know, this is just re-damn-diculous.

This via The Columbia State:

The dispute focuses on the definition of “victim.” Supporters, like Bryant, say the unborn child is a victim who has rights that must be protected.

“We’re focusing on the rights and the liberty of an unborn child, and I can’t understand why the life of a child that’s a victim ought to be terminated,” Bryant said.

So what is an uninsured rape victim supposed to do? Well, she can pay-out-of-pocket for an abortion — something that isn’t likely given her financial status. Or, she can bare the shame and degradation of knowingly carrying and eventually going into labor and delivering the child of her attacker.

At that point, she can then make the decision to keep the child, or give it up for adoption. Now I’m not a woman, but this seems very wrong on so many levels. I could be wrong, but it seems too much like punishing a woman for 1) being a victim of rape, and 2) for being poor. According to the provisio — which is defined as a temporary one-year law — abortions would be paid for with tax payer dollars only in the event that the life of the mother is in danger.

The three exemptions in the state health plan — rape, incest or life of the mother — mirrors the policy of the federal government health plan, commonly referred to as the Hyde Amendment, named for former U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois. That federal policy has been in place for more than 30 years.

Since 2006, state taxpayers have paid for 6 abortions. All of them were to save the life of the mother, according to the state Budget and Control Board.

Currently the state’s health insurance plan covers 417,000 individuals – no word on just how many of them are raped annually. However, this is something SC Republicans have been trying to pass for the last two years. Here’s to hoping that they remain unsuccessful this time around. But whether they are or not, it can never be said that women without access to affordable health care were not under attack like they always have by our slightly-more-conservative friends in the Republican party.

[FULL STORY HERE]

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This is what’s been happening with this not-so-new but ongoing debate over contraceptives between the Catholic church and the White House. People have been asking me what are my thoughts concerning the debate, and I’ll say to you as I have said to them:  for Republicans, treating contraceptives and abortion as one in the same – clearly, they are not – is politically expedient. I mean think about this: the argument made by Conservatives suggests that president Obama is infringing on the Constitutional right to freedom of religion. Let them tell it, the government is forcing a Catholic run facility to provide coverage that covers contraceptives, that somehow kills a fetus.

Mitt Romney himself said on the campaign trail that the policy forces women to use the Morning After Pill, which he considers to be an abortion pill. Simply put, this is not true; this is the twisting of facts for political expediency. And the funny thing about this, is that Romney himself signed into law the very same measure as governor for Massachusetts infamous “Romneycare”. You know, that now evil health care plan that was the template for today’s Affordable Care Act  otherwise known as Obamacare? Yeah, you know that whole Kenyan style Socialist thingy?

This from Team Obama:

Mitt Romney is attacking new Affordable Care Act guidelines that require most insurance providers to cover contraceptive services, accusing President Obama’s administration of “using Obamacare to impose a secular vision on Americans who believe that they should not have their religious freedom taken away.”

But the facts tell a different story. Just as he criticizes federal health reform based on the law he passed in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney is attacking the President for providing women with the same access to contraception and preventive health care services Romney did as governor. Our new infographic takes a look at how contraception coverage compares under the Affordable Care Act and the Massachusetts law Romney stood behind.

But no, today contraceptives used by women and covered by health insurance companies, are treated like back alley abortion. And all the while, nobody on the right like Romney mentions that this rule already exists in 28 states; or that 98% of Catholic women have used contraceptives at one point in their lives. But no, let them tell it, you’d think that Catholic men will go to hell if they use condoms, and the pill is like smoking crack. Yep, and of course nobody wants the government to force people to smoke crack or be damned to hell. Listen, you can choose to believe the lies of the GOP if you choose if you like. But hey, if you’re interested in understanding just what I’m talking about, Rachel Maddow does an excellent job of breaking it all down in the following video. Yep, do yourself a favor and take a few minutes to understand just what this is all about.

Clearly with nothing else to stand on, the road to the White House run through a uterus.

The post The GOP Road to the White House Runs Through the Uterus, & Obama’s “War On Religion” appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

I can’t imagine myself saying aloud that people of color are not deserving of citizenship and are “illegal”. I would never bring myself to say that inner city kids could dumpster-dive for food during school breaks instead of the government increasing Food Stamps and other benefit programs (so that they can eat!). I cannot imagine myself saying people with same sex/same gender loving attractions are worst than terrorists. So I honestly, genuinely, sincerely wonder what flows through Rick Santorum’s mind when he says things like, ‘well, rape sucks but if God blesses you with a kid, you gotta deal with it because abortion is bad.’ I mean, did anybody seem him on Piers Morgan?

Now, admittedly, I may have caused a bit more of a ruckus than Piers Morgan and argued that point, but whatever. Conception, conshmeption. Maybe I’d have said, ‘Okay, Mr. Santorum, Should rape victims be thankful for the risk of sexually transmitted infections resulting from forced intercourse which, I assume, was unprotected since a child was conceived?’ I expect that he would know not how to respond. Or maybe he would. I can’t imagine where his mind would go from there. I might find myself questioning a bit harder.

Come On, What Am I Supposed To Say?

‘Mr. Santorum, did you know that victims of sexual assaultare 3 times more likely to suffer from depression, 6 times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, 13 times more likely to abuse alcohol, 26 times more likely to abuse drugs, and 4 times more likely to contemplate suicide?’

I would like a genuine response to his lack of concern about the welfare of victims, but I anticipate, especially given his devote Catholicism, that he’d discuss how killing herself after the rape is also the victim’s fault. I’d probably get angry, but I’d likely want to continue to engage. So I’d say, ‘Mr. Santorum, you realize that post-traumatic stress disorder comes POST trauma, correct? And that because someone else assumed power to violate a victim’s body, they’ve been traumatized to the point that they no longer want to live? That 13% of all rape victims make serious suicide attempts?‘

And when he gets too frustrated or speechless to address me, or simply satisfied with himself that he can call me another angry Black woman, I’m certain that he’ll want to leave the conversation. So, as a final attempt to appeal to his logic, and while I know the argument is equally about abortion as it is about rape/sexual assault and less about race, I’d probably say quietly to him as a checkmate to satisfy myself, ‘OK, sir. How would you feel if your either woman in your life became pregnant as a result of a rape by a Black man?’

I think I could get through to him.

I know that this is not proper thinking. I am not promoting an idea about Black masculinity. What I am saying is that we know how fondly Mr. Santorum is of Black people; we also know that not-a-one of these racist Republicans want their daughters speaking to Black men, let alone willingly engaging in sexual intercourse with any. You think if someone he loved was raped by a Black man he wouldn’t rush them to an abortion provider and pay for it himself? You out your mind.

The post Rick Santorum, Abortion, & the “What If” Rape Question appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

The site is absolutely incredible in the sickest of ways. Indeed, there are youtube videos of folks from all over (grown men included), giving up things that they just love because abortion is just that bad. Fortunately enough, right under ‘abortion’ on the list of things that anti-choicers are passionate about are things like: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, soda, diet-soda, goldfish crackers, cheese-burgers, carbs, french-fries, red-meat, trans fats, ice-cream, and other things that are certain to kill you. And yes, there are plenty of youtube videos. Observe:

For the record, the anti-choicers are throwing as some online have referred to as extended New Year’s resolutions until abortion ends with no regard to true logic. On a fundamental level, the Until Abortion Ends “movement” seems to be a tantrum to end access to resources, but the problem is that the anti-choicers aren’t the ones who need to be protesting. To be frank, the hoops that women have to jump through to receive access to reproductive health resources are ridiculous. Many states don’t offer access to abortion providers in the majority of counties; they also do not provide counseling or other resources for women who want to terminate their pregnancies. Even so, contraception is difficult enough to attain and it is no coincidence that anti-choicers often spend time with the same folks who are down with abstinence-only curricula.
Those pesky anti-choicers (who obviously do not find women intelligent enough to choose what happens to their bodies) are not losing, so why are they pledging their snack-foods away until access to safe and legal abortion ends?

The post Umm, “Until Abortion Ends,” I’m Giving Up Hope for anti-Abortion Movements appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

This vis The Cagle Post:

Rick & Karen Santorum

Two days later, she became severely feverish. She was rushed to the hospital and placed on intravenous antibiotics, which reduced her fever and bought her some time, but could not eliminate the source of infection: the fetus.

Karen was going to die if her pregnancy was not ended, if the fetus was not removed from her body. So, at 20 weeks, one month before what doctors consider ‘viability’, labor was artificially induced and the infected fetus was delivered. It died shortly thereafter.

I wonder if Rick thinks the doctor who did this procedure for his wife should be “criminally charged” as should all abortion providers as he has openly stated? Further, I wonder of God is still mad at him and Karen for this? More importantly, I wonder why he isn’t asked about this on the campaign trail?

The post Pious Bologna: So Rick Santorum’s Wife Had a Partial-Birth Abortion? appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

Sometimes I want to just speak the way I do naturally about the things I feel about passionately!

And I really feel some way about myself and all things related to my vagina. I love my coochie, it does amazing things for me and others. My vagina and others contributes to your life in ways that you have not often considered.

I often wonder why other people aren’t more concerned with her safety and health, at least concerned enough to want what’s right for her and other vagina?

Sometimes there are no need for fancy ass words and comparisons when I see outlandish shit like this recent article on Aljazeera about the statistics surrounding Cervical Cancer and why the women in certain US states are more likely to die if they are unfortunate enough to develop this disease.

But every year 4,000 American women die from the disease, most of them in the South. For instance, a woman in Mississippi is nearly twice as likely to die from cervical cancer as an average American woman.

The issue is not that states like Mississippi are poorer and therefore have less capital available to provide for such services as cancer screenings.

No, that would be the easy answer. That’s the answer a simple person would come up with, A+B=C, however, things are not as simple as some people need them to be in order to understand the bigger picture.

The seemingly obvious answer is that Mississippi is the poorest state in the US, and therefore must have a lot of residents without health insurance. But when Mississippi is compared to a state like California, which has a similar rate of uninsured people, Mississippi’s death rate from cervical cancer remains extraordinary: 75 per cent higher than that in California.

The issue is not with the population and some dysfunctional underestimation of the severity of cervical cancer, rather the debate is about ideology and some babbling bullshit that has nothing to do with the realities of disease and medicine.

Cervical cancer is a hotly-debated political topic in the United States right now – a debate fuelled largely by Republican presidential contenders. The cancer is caused by strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), which is sexually transmitted. As a result, discourse on cervical cancer centres around whether or not newly available vaccines to prevent the disease encourage promiscuity.

So why does Mississippi have a 75% higher death rate for cervical cancer then a place just as big and just as wide?

I’m sure the people in Mississippi would love to know. Well the answer is quite simple…

Mississippi politicians believe that unborn and not yet conceived babies have a right to life so in order to protect these babies (that have not yet been conceived or born) the state refuses to provide funding to Planned Parenthood through the Title X program because Planned Parenthood supports a women’s right to terminate a pregnancy, among other service they provide to the uninsured community.

Title X DOES NOT provide funds to Planned Parenthood FOR termination of pregnancy but Pro-Life Advi-holes still somehow confuse you into thinking that Planned Parenthood=Abortion. And it doesn’t, but even if it did. So the fuck what?

Title X is a Federal Program that grants money to states which in turn disperse the money to counties in order for them to provide medical services to those that do not have health insurance.

Some states allow Planned Parenthood to provide the majority of health services to the uninsured and funds them sufficiently which enables the facility to charge reasonable fees for treatment costs such as cancer screening.

Planned Parenthood is also clean, efficient, compassionate and easily accessible to the low income and excluded demographic (read: inner city/poor and/or immigrant population). I don’t even need to get into the validity of having respectable, responsible, and clean facilities; many a state agency could take a que from the quality of service of Planned Parenthood.

What makes Mississippi fail is their decision to keep their Title X money within the state offices and burn it up within the Department of Health and Human Services. California grants their money to the private non-profit Planned Parenthood.

Because of this difference in the allocation of funds California cancer patients have a chance at survival; Mississippi cancer patients not so much.

In Mississippi, a woman you love may be allowed to die because her health care is treated like an administrative nuance.

When you live in a state that runs public clinics that are not accessible and where the staff are ignorant of their own practice policies you will catch cancer or any other reproductive disease and you will more than likely die.

You will die because the decision on whether or not you can or cannot have the medicine that will save your life (before or after your life is in jeopardy) is being made by people that disrespect the vagina for stupid reasons that you silently consent to.

You or a woman you love may die of cervical cancer whether she fucked or not.

The argument is that the vaccine may save your life or the life of a woman you love but may also somehow allow you or her to feel free/able/brave/confident (what’s the word I’m looking for?) enough to one day go out and have sex. The vaccine may cause fucking….you can’t have it because you might have sex. I wonder how that works if you are married? Or not religious?

I wonder why more people aren’t concerned by these phantom moral police that jeopardize the survival of the vagina. Religious fear of the potential future fuck of some random woman is not a good enough reason ONE SINGLE WOMAN TO DIE.

On the other hand, Planned Parenthood’s primary focus is women’s health care. In fact, it is the US’ largest provider of women’s healthcare. It provides birth control, emergency contraception, pregnancy testing, sexually-transmitted infection treatment, breast exams and cervical cancer screening. One in five American women use Planned Parenthood at some point during their lifetime.

Planned Parenthood is the sole provider of care and services to nearly 17 million uninsured women in the United States. 

In February 2011, the US House of Representatives successfully passed a bill introduced by Congressman Mike Pence (R-Indiana) to completely eliminate Title X – and offered nothing in its place. Early next year, when the president releases his proposed budget for 2013, the same is expected to happen again – except that this time, in this campaign season of cost-cutting one-upmanship, the Senate might go along and really end the programme.

People have allowed the ideology of the Right to Life advocates to strangle Planned Parenthood’s existence into near extinction and with that the lives of many women will be lost. I hope not to be one of them.

Why this isn’t an issue for you I do not know. Maybe you don’t like pussy or you hate your Mother for shitting you out. I don’t know.

But if so, FUCK YOU then!

I don’t need an audience to scream and I don’t need back up to know when I’m right and shit is wrong. And that shit is wrong.

I’m not the only woman out here with a vagina.

My daughter has one.

Your Mamma has one.

And I’ll bet my last Newport cigarette on the fact that your Grandmother had one too.

So why don’t you find it counter productive that ideology pretends to be Pro-Life for imaginary unborn babies yet they are willing to jeopardize the women that give babies the lives in which they hold so precious?

Riddle me that, Batman?

The post You’re Pro-Life But Not When It Comes to Women?! appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

Too bad, the young man wasn’t smart enough to keep their little interlude as a private matter in the Real World (not online) and so he decided to upload the video to Youtube where it, of course, went viral.

After countless comments, Twitter flaming, power blogging and an advocates intervention, the two boys involved in the melee were arrested over the weekend for their part in recording and distributing what is considered child pornography. 

*Shout out to all of you losers who actually watched, commented and/or passed along a video of a kid slurping some pissy kid’s dick. How does to feel to wonder if/when the FBI will be kicking in your door? *

Although I am not in defense of the boys actions, I wonder if any of these kids ever heard of the teens arrested in cases involving cell phones and nude picture forwarding. In PA during 2009 two teenage girls were arrested for distributing child porn when they chose to release nude pictures of themselves.

Just this year two Florida teens were arrested for forwarding a picture of an exposed breast. The young man was arrested for possessing the breast picture and the girl was arrested for taking the picture of her undeveloped teet and sending it to the young man.

In general, teenagers sneaking around to have sex is NOTHING new so I wish everyone would stop pretending it is. Yes, ‘back in the day’ girls and boys were less willing to risk public humiliation and ridicule so you had to search out someone who would be down for a little ‘risky frisky’.

Hi, Rihanna….

Those were usually the girls called ‘easy’ (I, myself, prefer ‘friendly’) and the many guys who loved them. In high school less frequented bathrooms were locked or monitored by security (3rd fl, Henry Snyder High School, the female security was on duty but was always in the stall taking a nap).

Stairwells that led to dark private places that teenagers could disappear too were chained off (and so the boys would break the locks with cutters taken from shop class).

Rooftop doors were bolted and set with alarms (that didn’t work or whose wires were disconnected). Everyone knew and no one cares, how do you think the kids get away with this? As an adult, you’re an ass if you think anything improved about teenage monitoring or if the behavior of young people changed since however many years it’s been since you had ‘teen’ on your age.

Yeah, the adults sure did try hard to keep us from doing what they knew we were doing. But who tipped them off?

How did they know many of the teenagers were fooling around? Are we really gonna act surprised now because we have pictures for proof?

BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE DO!!!

Teenagers are sexually active the same places they have ALWAYS been sexually active which is in the stairwells at school, in the classrooms at school (according to pictures I found (without looking) on Tumblr), while the parents are asleep, while attending the party, after school at a friends house (in groups, daily!), before school after the parents leave for work, while the parents are on vacation (white parents leave teens home alone and KNOW they are screwing, apparently birth control and abortions are encouraged).

Teenagers find an opportunity to fool around while ‘staying with’ Grandma who is too old and feeble to keep up with them. Grandma’s house was also another favorite of mine. How do you think adults can monitor these teens who move covert with military like precision and the tactical capabilities of NASA?

What type of leash shall we use?

Absolutely none, because where the general public seemed to obsess over this teenage girl ‘giving a blow job to a boy’ they overlook the fact that this is one girl/couple in an act that is repeated daily and throughout the lives of many teen aged young people. This is what they do….and they’re not ashamed of it. Nor should they be.

Let’s be honest, the anger displayed on the internet at the actions of the young girl are only due to her skin color. Blacks are still wandering around in the land of shame and denial when it comes to sexuality and brown skin. The (presumed) female posters charge the girl with getting her just punishment for being ‘a whore and doing that in public’ and the (presumably) male posters condemned the girl for being a ‘whore who knew what she was doing’.

Am I to presume dick sucking is okay as long as it’s behind closed doors? And am I to presume that the males would have been less mean in the online comments if the 14 year old didn’t know what she was doing? There is a lot of misdirected attention behind this situation.

Her actions are the least of what concerns me, the population at large, on the other hand, is what is making me want to vomit.

Yes, the young woman in question should make better choices in her male companions but what about the male’s behavior? Our culture still refuses to treat Black sex (on a whole) as something normal and healthy while also producing, encouraging, celebrating and happily consuming hyper sexual displays of exploitative Black male sexuality.

Let the young people have their risky behavior; let them make mistakes and learn from them. Surely this group has, or has the notoriety of this girl made the prospects of celebrity even more tempting. What girl will top this…or seek to?

Adults, on the other hand, may want to consider spending their time reflecting on what that type of lack they have going on that makes a video of teenagers having oral sex so dam interesting to them?

The unfortunate thing is that the immature behavior of a guy spilling the beans about what you two did isn’t even justified by a young age; I know plenty of grown ass men who are more than happy to ‘run tell dat’ once a woman is kind enough to give them some lovin’.

It’s not like having a Youtube video go viral but the attempt at slut shamming is apparent and plenty of men and women participate in this behavior through gossip, dirty looks and side comments.

It even happened to little old me.

Too bad for him I wasn’t ashamed; and when his boys came at me that Monday morning (Dam! News travels fast) to taunt and humiliate me on the bus ride to work I had no where to run. And since I could run, I fought back by saying I found it amusing that a grown man would brag that he visited a woman and had sex with her. Was it such an infrequent event that for this guy that he got so excited he had to tell everyone? (Not in the least, since he was a “Playboy” and had done this to other women who these guys successfully shamed into quitting their jobs.)

Strange how he didn’t inform his boys that his manhood wasn’t proportionate to his 6’5 and 300 pound frame AND he was ‘done’ about 10 seconds into my kind deed!

After me and the fellas had our little discussion, they never mentioned it to me again, I never hung my head at my actions and suddenly the Playboy resigned from his job and was never to be heard from again.

Still shocked at the behavior of kids? Get over it. The ONLY thing you can do is to make sure young people are informed about the consequences before they click themselves into jail time or worse, a trending topic on Twitter! Now go find your teenagers and make sure they’re not filming a video.

The post Amber Cole: Why Hyper-Sexual Teenagers Arent A New Phenomenon appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

` 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 had anything to do with 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 by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.

“Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws,” said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). “It’s turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights.”

First off, this case needs, and should be given more attention. Sure she didn’t fail to report a missing child for thirty one days to authorities. This is a woman facing life in prison for the murder of her unborn child, when she was 15-years0old. I don’t know about you, but there are several egregious issues with that scenario. First one being: she was a teenager with a drug problem at the time. But I guess that’s no big deal since there’s an epidemic of Black teens pregnant and hooked on drugs as some Conservatives would have you believe.

Please believe that without the necessary media attention, this young Black woman is doomed. Without the media spotlight, with her being Black, and this being a case that sets much precedence – not to mention the political implications given the GOP’s war on women of late — this case is much bigger than the Casey Anthony murder trial. But like I said before, she’s Black so who cares? She just did what every Black woman did in the 80s. That is, give birth to crack babies who have now all grown up to be the scourge of our society, right?

I know what you’re thinking, “Nah, this isn’t about the rights of women RiPPa. This is about protecting and seeking justice for unborn children. After all, they have rights too, right?” Sure they have rights; I mean I’m all about fetuses being protected from being kicked in the stomach, or risk death at the hands of a third party. But to criminalize a woman for drug use while pregnant when there’s no evidence to support it as being the cause of death of her unborn child? Hello! That’s bullshit! What, are we going to do the same for women who drink and smoke cigarettes while pregnant? Aren’t those “legal abuses” found to be more harmful to unborn children? I mean, that’s what the experts say, right?

Recently many of us in the Black community were outraged by the tactics of anti-abortion groups as they targeted the Black community with their billboards. We voiced our displeasure, and won. We should be equally disgusted and vocal about the indictment of Ms. Gibbs. We should let our voices be heard, and heard loudly. We all raised our voices and expressed our disgust when it came to the Scott Sisters and the state of Mississippi, and we were victorious. Today, we must do the same for Rennie Gibbs. We marched on Jena fighting for justice for six Black teenage boys. It would be a damn shame if we do not seek justice for one Black woman. Wouldn’t be surprising; but disappointing.

Thankfully others are already on it:

[...] 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’ 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 told the Guardian that he hoped the Gibbs prosecution was an isolated example. “I hope it’s not a trend that’s going to catch on. To charge a woman with murder because of something she did during pregnancy is really unprecedented and quite extreme.”

He pointed out that anti-abortion groups were trying to amend the Mississippi constitution by setting up a state referendum, or ballot initiative, that would widen the definition of a person under the state’s bill of rights to include a foetus from the day of conception.

Some 70 organisations across America have come together to file testimonies, known as amicus briefs, in support of Gibbs that protest against her treatment on several levels. One says that to treat “as a murderer a girl who has experienced a stillbirth serves only to increase her suffering”.

Another, from a group of psychologists, laments the misunderstanding of addiction that lies behind the indictment. Gibbs did not take cocaine because she had a “depraved heart” or to “harm the foetus but to satisfy an acute psychological and physical need for that particular substance”, says the brief.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument put forward in the amicus briefs is that if such prosecutions were designed to protect the unborn child, then they would be utterly counter-productive: “Prosecuting women and girls for continuing [a pregnancy] to term despite a drug addiction encourages them to terminate wanted pregnancies to avoid criminal penalties. The state could not have intended this result when it adopted the homicide statute.”

Some of you are still angry about Casey Anthony getting away with murder as you se it. Well, you should be just as angry or even more, if this young Black woman goes to prison for the rest of her life, for the crime of being a troubled teen. Surely in good conscience you can’t say that she deserves to be in prison.

(FULL STORY HERE)

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