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An Alabama woman was imprisoned for ‘endangering’ her fetus. She gave birth in a jail shower
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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The way the detention staff acted in this is frankly disgusting. That being said, I don't think it is entirely fair to equate Alabama's frankly stupid abortion legislation with assigning a certain level of rights to a foetus. If a mother intends to carry to full term and is using drugs, I don't think it is fair to the foetus-soon-to-be-person to ignore this.
Who here would like to try and explain to a victim of foetal alcohol syndrome or prenatal opioid exposure that their suffering is morally acceptable because their mother had the right to choose?
It doesn't always need to be one extreme or another, there is a middle ground.
There's some legal murkiness I could see coming from that, but in principle it seems like something you would have to prosecute after the individual was born.
If a fetus isn't a person, then there's no victim. The potential of a victim isn't the same as a victim. The intention for there to be a victim doesn't even create a victim.
I think about the closest thing you could argue for would be that if a person knew they were pregnant, could have aborted but chose not to, and engaged in behavior that demonstrably caused harm once there was a live person, then maybe you could argue some type of negligence. But even that feels really close to a slippery slope to me, and makes me too uncomfortable.
If for no other reason than it could create a situation where someone is prosecuted for knowingly reproducing while having a measurable statistical chance of a heritable birth defect, or just being above the age where down syndrome becomes more likely.
Except this is precisely the opposite of the logic used if some third party causes the harm. If, say, a pregnant woman gets shot in a mugging gone wrong and her fetus dies as a consequence, were more than willing to count that as a homicide and for some reason this line of reasoning vanishes.
It's either a person or not, not whichever is more convenient to the mother in whatever situation occurs.
Personally, I wouldn't be in favor of classifying that as a homicide, but would rather it be an aggravating factor attached to the crime of shooting the actual person.
There is a cost, morally and emotionally, to a fetus dying, but it's not a crime against the fetus but the mother.
The existence of a law written in a way I disagree with doesn't obligate me to agree with another one I disagree with.
Because the act of driving drunk is, itself, illegal. Drunk driving isn't framed as vehicular manslaughter of a non-person. If a person is hurt, that's a separate offense.
There's a difference between the potential to hurt an unspecified individual, and the potential to hurt a specific entity that may or may not exist in the future.
What was being discussed was not "drinking while pregnant", but "engaging in risky behavior while intending to carry to term". Closer to "drinking while intending to drive".
In any case, I'm still not sure I'm in favor of it. One can't unknowingly get drunk and drive a car, but one can unknowingly become pregnant and have a drink.
I can't boobietrap my own home because there's the potential of a firefighter, or someone innocent hurting themselves.
First, those people, although unspecified, actually exist. Creating a hazard for real people is different from taking an action that could hurt a person who does not exist.
Secondly, creating a device with the intent to hurt someone regardless of circumstance or actual threat is pretty morally different from typical home defense, to say nothing of engaging in behavior that could incidentally harm a fetus.
It seems weird to me that you're trying to create a disconnect when cause and effect is cause and effect.
I can't work on my own electrical for my home without getting it inspected. If my house burnt down and harmed someone I could be held responsible. Even without harm I could be liable.
We're in the comments on an article about a woman being thrown in jail for endangering her fetus, and you're arguing that because a fetus could turn into a person that's fine.
I'm not saying fetuses don't turn into people, I'm saying that at most you can look at actual damage done once the person actually exists.
Women aren't houses, so criminalizing their behavior because of the impact it might have in a person who does not yet exist is not great.
I'm an antinatalist, I just find your arguments bad.
Women "not being houses" is irrelevant to the point I made. We criminalize actions all the time when harm isn't actual, only potential.
So is your point that because we've done something before, we should do it again?
If not, I'm not sure what "we've done it before" has to do with "we should not do it now".
Criminalizing otherwise legal behavior because of the impact it might have on a person who might exist in the future is a not good thing to do.
Considering both of your arguments against not doing that centered around how we regulate houses, it seems like it might have been relevant to point out that women aren't houses, and so maybe we should use a different criteria for judging laws that impact them.
I disagree whole heartedly. Criminalizing things like using drugs during pregnancy leads to criminalizing miscarriages for natural reasons which has absolutely happened. There's not a ton of cases, but women have gone to jail for having a miscarriage after saying they wanted an abortion based on the idea that they must have killed their fetus.
I don't care about prosecuting or criminalising in this case. There is already precedent for rehabilitation both voluntary, and in the case where a person's safety is at risk, involuntary.
I don't see why this could not be expanded to include the safety of an unborn child.
Noting specifically that I am talking about drug abuse where a woman intends to carry to term, not about locking women up to force them to give birth. I hate that I even have to clarify, but if experience had taught me anything, people on social media get positively orgasmic when they find something they can willfully misinterpret.
Disgusting but not surprising
I agree. If your goal is to give birth, it feels like the fetus becomes a person. Otherwise, 20 to 24weeks, in my opinion, is the reasonable time a fetus could become a person as it is in that period that the conscious experience starts to appear.
The mother in this story was 2 months pregnant when she was arrested, so about eight weeks. I've searched for every other news story on this I could find and none of them say when she became aware she became pregnant and whether or not she used drugs after that, so it's quite likely she didn't have a goal of giving birth here.
That's a different case, everything in the news article and lawsuit happened in 2021 but this one from the sheriff's page is from 2022
Assuming it's the same person and the sheriff's office is being truthful, it doesn't look like any of these awful events did anything to protect her children or stop her drug addiction
So it's your contention she was incarcerated in 2021 for conduct she engaged in during 2022? Because that seems like a violation of the Constitution, along with like laws of physics, but I really just don't understand what point you're trying to make here.
The comment I was responding to said [paraphrased] "if your goal is to give birth and you use drugs when you know you're pregnant that should be a crime." I just pointed out that we don't know if she knew she was 2 months pregnant in March 2021 when she was arrested, resulting in this jailhouse shower birth in October 2021. Whatever she's alleged to have done in 2022 and any arrests that resulted from that doesn't have anything to do with that question.
Yeah, it's definitely possible. She was arrested after failing a drug test, they probably did the pregnancy test then too and that could have been how/when she found out she was pregnant.