[M]edical personnel at Keller Hospital determined that the umbilical chord [sic] had previously been severed while still inside [Jennifer Darlene] Johnson’s uterus.So the state has charged Ms. Johnson with manslaughter. Oh, Alabama. This is the state whose anti-evolution science textbook disclaimer has served as a model for other states' boards of education around the country since 1996. (Maybe that's why the news article author writes umbilical chord rather than cord.)
“Investigators believe the evidence demonstrates that the death of the infant is directly related to the intentional severing of the umbilical chord [sic],” [police investigator] Tyler said.
Like the Dakotas and Mississippi and maybe a few other states I can't think of offhand, there is only one abortion provider to serve all the women in Alabama. Ms. Johnson here lives in Florence, a little burg over 200 miles from the state's sole abortion clinic, in Montgomery.
Passing laws that severely restrict abortion -- from parental consent requirements to waiting periods to highly detailed, exacting building code standards that apply only to abortion clinics -- has been a hugely successful strategy that the anti-choice movement has embraced since 1973. The constitutional fight against these absurd restrictions was lost with Casey (1992), which upheld Pennsylvania's waiting period, parental notification, and "informed consent" rules. Now, after Carhart (2007), all you have to do is convince 5 male, mostly white, Catholic judges that the new restriction you've passed will help keep women from regretting their abortions afterward, and your anti-choice law is good to go.
Alabama has more legal obstacles to obtaining an abortion than most other states. Additionally, it has never repealed its pre-Roe ban on abortion, keeping it in place as a "trigger law" for when the Supreme Court overturns Roe altogether and gives all power to the states to decide women's health matters.
What do you get when you add together a low income, no federal Medicaid funding for abortions, no state public funding for abortions, the state's only abortion provider over 200 miles away, and a waiting period that would require an overnight hotel stay? You get your photo published in Ms. magazine in 1973. Or, since this is 2008, after hospital authorities conclude that you attempted a self-administered late-term abortion, you get arrested and charged with manslaughter.
So I'm not horrified that Ms. Johnson terminated her pregnancy. I'm horrified that she couldn't have it done safely, in a medical facility. I'm horrified that people still think that Roe is intact and continues to preserve our right to an abortion. And I'm horrified that the vast majority of women in this country, like Ms. Johnson, can't exercise that right.
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4 comments:
You write "I'm horrified that people still think that Roe is intact..."
That's an interesting discussion that, as I'm sure you're aware, is tied inextricably to socioeconomic class. I am confident that women close to me or in my social circle would have the financial and logistical wherewithall to obtain an abortion, and as such even a skeletal Roe does the trick.
The burden really falls on women in poorer communities, where access to accurate reproductive information can be as difficult to comeby as a couple hundred bucks for the procedure.
The anti-choicers have managed to pursue a strategy that goes largely unnoticed by affluent suburban swing voting women, but that still achieves the most forced pregnancies for their buck.
Indeed -- I volunteer at Planned Parenthood once a week to help minors with their paperwork for judicial bypass around Pennsylvania's parental notification law. The minors I help are the ones who don't have a car and can't afford to go to New Jersey, which doesn't require parental notification.
It's an open secret that among abortion providers that, in Philadelphia, every judicial bypass is granted. But the minors I've helped haven't known that, and by the time I see them they tend to believe that they're not going to be able to get the abortion. Imagine a 17-year-old with a three-month-old baby at home who thinks that a judge is going to tell her she'll soon be an unmarried teenage mother of two. How many minors give up trying to get an abortion when they find out they'll have to justify themselves before a judge?
It's really sick, and you're right. The restrictions and obstacles aren't much of a problem for your "affluent suburban swing voting women," but it's terrible for the minors I've been helping.
Actually there are over half a dozen abortion clinics throughout Alabama, including two in Montgomery and at least two in Birmingham. Your "poor" mother in this story had several choices. Mississippi has only one. Seems your counting is as good as the author's "chord" spelling.
Ben --
You may be right. Unlike you, I don't live in Alabama so I have no direct experience with abortion clinics there. But also unlike you, I linked to a source about the legal obstacles to obtaining an abortion in that state.
I would be interested in following up on this case sometime. If you have more information about the circumstances and what's happened since I posted about it, I'd be grateful.
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