Then they came for the women….

Created
Tue, 17/10/2023 - 01:30
Updated
Tue, 17/10/2023 - 01:30
She gave birth in a jail shower Lost amidst the unfolding humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, this popped up in my feed just this morning. It’s the “fetal personhood movement” put into practice. No one “protected” is being protected. The latest example of outrageous behavior showing that the misnamed “right to life” movement (empowered by its allies in government) is really a hatred of women movement with no regard for actual children or the women who bear them. https://t.co/JQtc91IrO7 — David Cay Johnston (@DavidCayJ) October 15, 2023 Here’s the story from The Guardian: In March 2021, sheriffs in Etowah county, Alabama, arrested Ashley Caswell on accusations that she’d tested positive for methamphetamine while pregnant and was “endangering” her fetus. Caswell, who was two months pregnant at the time, became one of a growing number of women imprisoned in the county in the name of protecting their “unborn children”. But over the next seven months of incarceration for “chemical endangerment” in the Etowah county detention center (ECDC), Caswell was denied regular access to prenatal visits, even as officials were aware her pregnancy was high-risk due to her hypertension and abnormal pap smears, according to a lawsuit filed on Friday against the county and the sheriff’s department. She was also denied her prescribed psychiatric medication and slept on a thin mat on the concrete floor of the detention center for her entire pregnancy. In October, when her water broke and she pleaded to be taken to a hospital, her lawyer says, officials told her…