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Thu, 28 Feb 2013 20:18:21 -0500

thepeoplesrecord: The new Jane Crow: How hundreds of pregnant...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 20:32:21 -0500

The new Jane Crow: How hundreds of pregnant women have had their rights violated & health put in jeopardy as part of the war on choice
February 4, 2013

Regina McKnight was 21 years old when she was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison for homicide by child abuse—after she suffered a stillbirth eight-and-a-half months into her pregnancy.

The jury deliberated only 15 minutes before finding McKnight guilty of having committed “child abuse”—because of using cocaine during her pregnancy. She went to jail, and one appeals court after another upheld the conviction—until it was finally overturned eight years later on the grounds that the scientific evidence used to claim McKnight’s drug use was responsible for the stillbirth was “outdated” at the time of her trial.

Laura Pemberton was arrested while she was in active labor—for attempting to give birth at home, rather than undergo a C-section advised by her doctor. A sheriff strapped her legs together and took her to the hospital, where, at an emergency hearing, lawyers argued on behalf of her fetus. Pemberton and her husband were denied counsel during this hearing, though they were “allowed to express their views” as hospital staff prepared Pemberton for surgery.

These stories aren’t scenes out of some horror movie about a nightmarish future society. They are real-life accounts from the war on women and their rights that has been underway since the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973.

In a new report titled “Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973–2005,” the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) summarizes the experiences of 413 women who have been subjected to cruel punishments or unwanted medical procedures while they were pregnant.

No state or federal law permits the arrest or detention of women specifically due to pregnancy. Yet hundreds of pregnant women—predominantly low-income women and women of color—have had their rights taken away and their health put in jeopardy because police, prosecutors, judges and even medical personnel have claimed the authority to determine what will happen to their bodies. Lynn Paltrow, one of the authors of the NAPW study, calls this phenomenon “a new Jane Crow”—in reference to author Michelle Alexander’s best-selling examination of the mass incarceration system.

The crusade against women’s reproductive rights has been led by politicians and organizations which claim to cherish the “right to life” and champion women’s role as mothers. But the reality made painfully clear by the NAPW’s report is that the anti-choice right wants women to be treated as second-class citizens, denied the right to health care, personal liberty and the right to control their own bodies and lives.

Report authors Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin say their study understates the number of incidents of incarceration or forced medical intervention against pregnant women in the decades following Roe.

No one has attempted to compile these stories before, and records of the cases are either scattered among different sources or nonexistent altogether. Often, say Paltrow and Flavin, hospital staff impose unwanted procedures without the involvement of state authorities. Plus, the decisions of family and juvenile courts are kept confidential. So the number of victims is likely to be many times greater than the 413 cases verified by the NAPW in its rigorous study.

Nonetheless, the patterns of punishment described in the report paint a frightening picture of the consequences of the right’s campaign against reproductive freedom.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

What “crimes” were committed by the pregnant women whose stories are told in the NAPW report?

In the cases the report documents, women were most often targeted not for attempting to end a pregnancy, but for attempting to carry one to term. The main reason for arrest and detention was drug use during pregnancy, but in other cases, women were punished because they suffered from sexually transmitted diseases or mental illness while pregnant. Others wanted to deliver at home, refused C-sections or failed to access prenatal care.

In several cases, women were charged with one or more felonies after they suffered a miscarriage or attempted to end a pregnancy on their own. And in one case, state prosecutors used the fact that a woman had refused an offer of sterilization in support of its charges. This case, in particular, strikes an old and deep wound, following decades of forced sterilizations of Black, Latina, Native American and immigrant women.

In all, just over half of the women whose stories are collected in the report are Black. Nearly three quarters of those facing legal charges were represented by indigent defense.

African American women have suffered a long legacy of barbaric discrimination—from the separation of families under slavery to the early 20th century eugenics movement that pushed through laws in 32 states allowing the sterilization of women judged “unfit to breed.”

Today, poor Black single mothers are scapegoated for all manner of social problems. In particular, the war on drugs has served as a vehicle for the attack, with drug convictions serving as the excuse for terminating parental rights of incarcerated mothers.

Meanwhile, the media have whipped up a moral panic over drug use during pregnancy. Thus, cocaine was the drug most often associated with the criminal charges against pregnant women documented in the NAPW report. But health professionals now recognize that cocaine use during pregnancy poses no more significant risk to fetal health than poor nutrition, lack of prenatal care or other factors commonly suffered by the poor.

In fact, in most of the cases documented in the report, authorities didn’t claim that fetuses had been harmed, only that there was a risk of harm. And even when actual harm was alleged, in most cases, there was no scientific evidence or expert testimony to substantiate the claim.

For example, Geralynn Susan Grubbs, a 23-year-old woman in Alaska, was threatened with 30 years imprisonment and therefore pled guilty to a lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide in connection with the death of her two-week-old infant. Prosecutors claimed that drug use during pregnancy had caused the infant’s death—this allegation was allowed to stand even after an autopsy revealed that there was no connection between the death of the child and fetal drug exposure.

Such punishment flies in the face of the recommendations of the medical community. Organizations like the American Medical Association have concluded that criminalizing drug use by pregnant women only discourages women from seeking prenatal care and assistance with their addiction.

Nonetheless, Paltrow and Flavin document how threats of arrest or loss of custody lead some pregnant women with drug problems to avoid medical attention, prenatal care and hospital deliveries altogether. In one particularly absurd case, 34-year-old Alma Baker was prosecuted for dealing drugs to a minor—after she gave birth to twins who tested positive for THC, a chemical found in marijuana. Baker stated that if she realized the risk of criminal charges, she would not have gone to her doctor at all.

Alma Baker is white, which makes her case highly unusual among those documented in the NAPW report. Women of all races use drugs at rates roughly equivalent to their numbers in the overall population—yet overwhelmingly those questioned, screened and punished for drug use related to pregnancy were African American.

Full article

There are no words to describe my level of disgust.

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Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:24:54 -0500

animalstalkinginallcaps: THERE YOU ARE. I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR...

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:56:54 -0500

animalstalkinginallcaps:

THERE YOU ARE. I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU FOR OVER AN HOUR. HAVE YOU SEEN MY XANAX? I’M ABOUT TO LOSE MY SHIT.

NO. I HAD A HEADACHE, SO I TOOK THE LAST OF YOUR ASPIRIN. THEN I FELT REALLY GOOD FOR A WHILE. THEN I PASSED OUT FOR LIKE … FIVE HOURS. I WOKE UP AND ATE ABOUT FOUR MICROWAVE MEALS. NOW I’M JUST WAITING FOR THE SUNSET BECAUSE IT’S A CONSTANT SOURCE OF UNDERAPPRECIATED BEAUTY IN THIS CHAOTIC AND SEEMINGLY CRUEL WORLD. DON’T YOU AGREE?

OBVIOUSLY THOSE WERE MY XANAX, DAVID, AND I HATE YOU.

THAT’S UNFORTUNATE. I DON’T HATE ANYONE BECAUSE WE’RE ALL PART OF THE SAME FLOW OF COSMIC ENERGY, SHARING ONE CONSCIOUSNESS, INCHING EVER FORWARD TOWARD THE DIVINE LIGHT OF UNDERSTANDING AND TRANSCENDENCE.

YOU’RE A DICK, DAVE.

WE’RE ALL ONE DICK, ANDREW. THAT’S WHAT I’M TRYING TO TELL YOU.

"I still love the book-ness of books, the smell of books: I am a book fetishist—books to me are the..."

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 21:04:59 -0500

“I still love the book-ness of books, the smell of books: I am a book fetishist—books to me are the coolest and sexiest and most wonderful things there are.”

- Neil Gaiman (Locus, February 2005)

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Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:48:26 -0500

fishingboatproceeds: Every day. Except now they tell me,...

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 00:48:08 -0500

fishingboatproceeds:

Every day.

Except now they tell me, “1998.” And I’m like, “And you’re potty trained? That’s wonderful.”

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Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:56:04 -0500

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Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:51:59 -0500

95 Days left and counting...

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:56:11 -0500

95 Days left and counting...

kadrey: Lightning porn! I love lightning.

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 22:17:56 -0500

kadrey:

Lightning porn!

I love lightning.

"“Come on,” Jillette said. “Steal something from me.” Again, Robbins begged off, but he offered to..."

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 22:15:21 -0500

“

“Come on,” Jillette said. “Steal something from me.”

Again, Robbins begged off, but he offered to do a trick instead. He instructed Jillette to place a ring that he was wearing on a piece of paper and trace its outline with a pen. By now, a small crowd had gathered. Jillette removed his ring, put it down on the paper, unclipped a pen from his shirt, and leaned forward, preparing to draw. After a moment, he froze and looked up. His face was pale.

“Fuck. You,” he said, and slumped into a chair.

Robbins held up a thin, cylindrical object: the cartridge from Jillette’s pen.

”

- A PICKPOCKET’S TALE: The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins (via mattfractionblog)

Amazing and worth your time to read. Apollo was a consultant on LEVERAGE (along with Kevin Mitnick!) so I got to hang out with him a little bit. He’s a pretty remarkable dude.
(via wilwheaton)

"And so the current Republican demand, as I understand it, is that Dems must agree to Social Security..."

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 02:21:44 -0500

“And so the current Republican demand, as I understand it, is that Dems must agree to Social Security cuts and a higher income threshold for the lower tax rates (either $400,000 or $500,000, depending on the source), in exchange for an extension of middle class tax cuts (which Republicans also want) and an extension of unemployment benefits. If Dems don’t give up those things, while allowing Republicans to retain their debt ceiling leverage, taxes go up on everybody and unemployment benefits expire for over two million Americans.

Why would Democrats agree to Social Security cuts and lower tax rates on many wealthy households even as Republicans hold on to their leverage to extract still more in spending cuts later? No wonder a Dem aide described this as a “serious setback.””

- This isn’t a normal negotiation

When will the goddamn Democrats learn that the GOP is not now and has not been negotiating in good faith?

The American People overwhelmingly support the White House position in polling now (and at the polls last month). At this point, the Democrats and the White House should tell the GOP to go fuck themselves, dare them to vote no on an extension of unemployment and lower tax rates for people earning less than $250,000 a year, and then use the new senate and house that we elected in response to years of GOP obstructionism to get something new done on or about January 3.

There isn’t going to be a Grand Bargain. There never was going to be a Grand Bargain. These people are nihilists, Donnie.
(via wilwheaton)

Systemic Corruption

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 14:57:32 -0500

Systemic Corruption:

wilwheaton:

Historians are going to look back in awe at this New Gilded Age of ours in which an utterly broken government functioned solely on behalf of the wealthy when it functioned at all, with open graft and corruption everywhere in spite of unprecedented access to citizen mobilization and information.

WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR: Two Years Ago, John Boehner promised to be “Laser Focused on Jobs and...

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:45:01 -0500

WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR: Two Years Ago, John Boehner promised to be “Laser Focused on Jobs and...:

wilwheaton:

Two Years Ago, John Boehner promised to be “Laser Focused on Jobs and the Economy” So what has the GOP House been up to?

House Bills passed:
46 Bills on Abortion
113 Bills on Religion
73 Bills on Family Relationships
36 Bills on Marriage
72 Bills on Firearms
604 Bills on Taxation
437 Bills on…

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Thu, 20 Dec 2012 20:22:57 -0500

At home sick with kitty snuggles to help me feel better.

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 18:39:53 -0500

At home sick with kitty snuggles to help me feel better.

endlessme: Brigitte Bardot Playboy, 1969 Via starsensuelles

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:19:55 -0500

endlessme:

Brigitte Bardot
Playboy, 1969

Via starsensuelles

"Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program...."

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 15:12:57 -0500

“

Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about ‘Basketball Diaries’?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?” The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.
The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.

”

- Roger Ebert (via squid-skywalker)

animalstalkinginallcaps: WHERE IS MY LITTLE GREEN BALL WITH THE...

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 13:00:41 -0500

animalstalkinginallcaps:

WHERE IS MY LITTLE GREEN BALL WITH THE BELL IN IT, TARA?

I AM UNDER A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF STRESS AT WORK THIS WEEK AND I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR SELFISH LITTLE POWER GAMES.

WAKE UP.

ANSWER ME.