Proposed Amendment 1 on the ballot in the State of Tennessee
next week is not about protection or even regulation of anyone but rather about
compulsory pregnancy. Except, of course,
for those very few rich enough to travel to places with less regressive laws
and political officials less inclined to base pandering to a vocal minority and
more inclined to serve the general welfare of the broad public.
The vague wording is deliberately intended to disguise the
fact that its passage, if unchallenged or unsuccessfully challenged at the
federal level, would enable politicians pandering to the worst in humanity the
power to extend their reach into the innermost depths of the most intimate
physical area of the body of each and every woman in the Greatest State in the
Land of the Free.
Just a handful of cases from two countries with laws as
strict as this abomination would enable serve to illustrate results not only
possible but predictable and probable.
In El Salvador several months ago, Beatriz X, pregnant with a
fetus known from ultrasound and X-ray to be ancephalic (without a brain),
suffered to complications of a pregnancy that was non-viable in any case. Rather than the doctors being allowed to make
a medical decision based on medical grounds, Beatriz had to apply to the court
for permission to terminate the nonviable pregnancy and thereby continue to
live. The court refused her.
In the end, however, under circumstances only vaguely
explained, the doctors did eventually perform a C-section to save her life. The situation should never have entered the
public realm at all but remained a private and personal matter between Beatriz
and her doctors.
Also in El Salvador, Cristina Quintanilla was sentenced to
30 years for a miscarriage because authorities decided upon no medical or
scientific basis whatsoever that she had aborted. The same was true in the case of Maria Teresa
Rivera, sentenced to 40 years for a miscarriage.
Across the pond in Ireland, a country with equally backward
and regressive laws regarding women’s rights over their own bodies along with
extensive human rights violations and abuses against women, Savita Halappanavar died at a University Hospital
in Galway City almost exactly two years ago after being denied medical
treatment necessary to save her life. Savita
developed complications with her pregnancy which resulted in a miscarriage,
though the dead fetus was not expelled.
The staff a University Hospital Galway refused to abort the dead fetus
because it had previously had a heartbeat.
As a result,
Savita developed septicemia which could not be treated even after the staff
reluctantly performed the procedure that would have saved her life had it been
carried out upon her arrival 21 October rather than three days later. Her death on 28 October 2012 was a homicide
by withholding of necessary emergency medical treatment.
More recently, a
recent immigrant to Ireland from the Continent discovered herself pregnant
resulting from having been raped by an older relative in her home country. She immediately applied to have an abortion
under the law passed in the aftermath of Savita’s homicide which allowed for
abortion up to 20 weeks in certain limited circumstances, including rape,
incest, and health of the mother. She
was 17 weeks along at the time.
Officials deliberately delayed until well past the 20 weeks point before
handing down the determination that they could no longer consider ending the
pregnancy because it was past the legal time.
Patient X, 18
years old, embarked upon a hunger and thirst strike, willing to die herself
rather than be forced to carry the result of incestual rape to term. Authorities jailed her, forced fed her, and
eventually subjected her to a C-section against her will at 25 weeks.
Recurrence of
cases such as these here in Tennessee if Amendment 1 passes and stands are not
only possible nor merely probable but inevitable.
If you vote on no
other question on the ballot on Tuesday, 4 November, I urge each and every one
of you registered to vote No on Amendment 1 and prevent compulsory pregnancy
from coming to the Greatest State in the Land of the Free.
2 comments:
Well, we would move to Canada if we could.
Winston Churchill was famously quoted saying, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
It really does not matter much about voting; the wealthy and the corporations own the politicians anyway. They are going to persist in expanding inequality until the American people emulate 1789 France.
Unfortunately you are probably right.
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