9 June 2006 - 7:59am
The pregnant perp walk in the pro-life police state
Sometimes people can find just the right words to distill an issue into clarity:
No court has ever ruled that one person can be forcibly operated on for the benefit of another. The law cannot demand that you give up your kidney or bone marrow or even blood to save another life. Nor does it charge you with murder if you refuse.
Yet, only a pregnant woman loses the right to question doctor’s recommendation. Pro-Life legislation refuses the pregnant woman’s right to make medical decisions for herself and her fetus?
That is from Lee Salisbury, a former evangelical preacher who questions the current trend in politics.
In January, a doctor at a Salt Lake City hospital told Rowland she should have an emergency C-section if she wanted to save the life of one of the twins she was carrying. Rowland delayed, but eleven days later had the C-section and one of the babies was born dead. An autopsy showed the baby would probably have lived had the C-section been performed when the doctor ordered it. Prosecutors in Utah charged Rowland with first-degree murder, citing "depraved indifference to human life." Police immediately imprisoned Rowland and held her on $300,000 bail.
The result? "Effectively, the pregnant woman is a human incubator and has no rights." Salisbury wonders what this atmosphere does for women "desirous of becoming mothers."
What if a doctor decided on fetal heart surgery? Would it be murder if a pregnant woman said no?
It's a post worth reading -- especially the end.
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Comments
The current onslaught of social conservatism deems that a person's body belongs to the state and the curch, not the individual. The individual does not matter in a theaocratic environment, which we are getting closer to having every year the social conservatives are allowed to run over the laws of logic without a wimper from the opposition.
That's the motto of "The Department of Homeland Decency: Decency Rules and Regulations Manual," a hilarious satire of all this. Kids have to behave. Gays have to stay in the closet. You can only do "it" in the accepted "homeland way." And women have to take great joy in being pregnant over and over again.
I'd say we've marched about two-thirds of the way backwards to our future. We should be there in another couple years.
More of the Dept. of Homeland Decency at www.homelanddecency.com
The conclusion that a woman is a "human incubator" is taking it a bit too far. However, it looks like this is a rather peculiar extension of Roe and Casey. It appears that, after viability, the state's interests in protecting life outweigh the woman's interest in "bodily integrity." But that raises the question of why the state did not seek an order to compel the woman to undergo the procedure.
The other thing that is missing in the other post is why the woman did not want to have an emergency C-section. It would be ironic if she didn't want to undergo a C-section due to religious reasons.