Pro-Choice Maryland

Consider this to be a continuation of the previous entry....

An unusual courtroom discussion between doctors in a federal trial to determine if Wisconsin's requirement that abortion providers have hospital admitting privileges canstand got off to a rocky start Thursday with the judge sparring verbally with one expert.

U.S. District Judge William Conley pressed Dr. John Thorp, a University of North Carolina obstetrician whom state attorneys called to help defend the law, to quantify abortion risk rates. Thorp resisted, saying complications are under-reported and no U.S. studies on maternal deaths from abortion are reliable.

Conley then quipped the discussion reminded him of the quote popularized by author Mark Twain that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. Thorp, a member of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told Conley that he felt "chilled" by the idea that a federal judge thought he was lying. Conley responded that he didn't mean to imply that.

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Mississippi lawmakers took steps to become the latest U.S. state to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy by passing a measure on Thursday that seeks to further restrict access to the procedure.

Legislation approved by the state's House of Representatives in a 89-22 vote asserts that a fetus can feel pain by 20 weeks of gestation, halfway through a full-term pregnancy, and that the state has a duty to protect the unborn child.

Abortions would be legal after 20 weeks only if a woman's life was in danger, according to the measure. Physicians who defied the law could lose their medical license.

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Mississippi recorded 2,176 abortions in 2012, the latest year for which the state Department of Health made figures available. Eleven of the abortions occurred between the 16th and 20th weeks of gestation, and two after 20 weeks.

"People in Mississippi need to be demanding why they're considering legislation that has little impact on the state and is wasting taxpayer dollars," Derzis said. "This is grandstanding at its worst."

I got this snippet from the middle of the article. It's very long, but I think it's an interesting article even though some parts make me roll my eyes.

Last summer, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upheld this expanded interpretation of the chemical-endangerment law, ruling that the dictionary definition of “child” includes “unborn child,” an interpretation that will be challenged when the state’s Supreme Court considers Kimbrough’s case in the coming months. But the implications of that ruling go far beyond Alabama. Critics like Ketteringham argue that Alabama’s chemical-endangerment law offers a back door into what has become known as the “fetal personhood” argument.

Personhood USA, an organization based in Colorado, was founded in 2008 by Keith Mason after he became frustrated by the mainstream anti-abortion movement’s incremental approach of restricting the availability of legal abortion. “From my perspective, I saw a movement that was largely dying or dead and had a lack of enthusiasm from younger people and from people who had been in the fight for so many years,” he told me. “Something had to change. Personhood is that rallying point, because it’s the crux of the issue.” His movement seeks to establish the fetus’s right to live as equal to that of the mother’s.

Personhood advocates regard fetal rights as a civil rights issue, and they often compare themselves to abolitionists. “I think it would be unequal protection to give the woman a pass when anyone else who injects drugs into a child would be prosecuted,” Ben DuPré, director of Personhood Alabama, said. “What it boils down to is, aren’t these little children persons?”

The goal of Personhood USA is to establish that a fully rights-endowed person is created when sperm meets egg. To that end, it has introduced initiatives and measures in legislatures in 22 states. Though none of these measures have become law, some, like Proposition 26 in Mississippi, have made it to a ballot referendum, and other measures have passed legislative chambers in North Dakota, Montana and Oklahoma. The problem with those measures, from a legal perspective, says Lynn Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, is that “there is no way to treat fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses as separate constitutional persons without subtracting pregnant women from the community of constitutional persons.”

What is everyone's thoughts on this?

Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception.

"If it's not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is," Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.
Great point! These pregnancies aren't unwanted. They were really wanted and it's a slap in a face to these women to prosecute them. They are going through a hard time as it is.

I got this as a link through FB, btw