Outrage: forced birthers charge pregnant woman with getting shot

I had a fall during the taping of Episode 4 of The Erickson Report, delaying production for a week. So I thought I would post a couple of things intended for that show but which will not be used now.

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Outrage: forced birthers charge pregnant woman with getting shot

Another example of just how far the forced-birthers are prepared to go to enforce their dystopian view of women's independence.

Back on December 4 a 27-year-old Alabama woman named Marshae Jones got into a fight with a women named Ebony Jemison. In the course of the fight, Jemison shot Jones in the abdomen, leading Jones, who was five months pregnant at the time, to have a miscarriage.

Jemison was charged with manslaughter but a grand jury failed to indict and the charges were dropped.

Frustrated, prosecutors went after Jones, arguing she began the fight and therefore was responsible for her own shooting.

Why? Because they were unwilling to lose this opportunity to have a five-month old fetus declared a victim of manslaughter and thus a person. So on June 26 she was indicted for manslaughter and ordered jailed on $50,000 bond.

Charges were dropped on July 3 after an outcry and after it developed that Alabama's Criminal Code states that the prosecution of "any woman with respect to her unborn child" should not be permitted under criminal homicide charges like manslaughter. Police and prosecutors were so desperate for another woman to prosecute that they didn't even read the law.

After her arrest, police at least twice referred to her "unborn baby" (and to her as "the mother of the child") despite the medical fact that at roughly 21 or 22 weeks, the fetus is only barely and hypothetically viable.

But of course viability isn't the issue; "fetal personhood," treating even a fertilized egg as if it were a born child, giving a zygote more protection than the fully-grown woman, that is the point.

Marshae Jones

In fact, Alabama leads the country in criminal cases involving women accused of endangering their fetuses. Over 600 women have been charged since 2005 with alleged crimes related to their pregnancies.

The vast majority of them were prosecuted for exposing their embryo or fetus to controlled substances under the state’s “chemical endangerment of a child” statute. That law was passed in 2006 and mandates 10 years in prison for drug use during pregnancy even if the fetus, once born, shows no ill effects. Penalties run up to 99 years if the fetus dies.

But those aren't the only cases: Pregnant women have been charged for getting in a car accident, failing to leave a physically abusive partner, or attempting suicide.

Alabama’s Yellowhammer Fund, which advocates for abortion rights in the state, said that Jones’ treatment was part of “a new beginning” in Alabama’s zeal to undermine women’s reproductive rights. "Today, Marshae Jones is charged with manslaughter for being pregnant and getting shot," the group stated. “Tomorrow, it will be another black woman, maybe for having a drink while pregnant. And after that, another, for not obtaining adequate prenatal care.” And as always, "it will be poor, marginalized and black people who will feel this pain the most.”

Two footnotes: Ten states now have laws requiring physicians to tell patients that medically-induced abortions can be "reversed." What they really mean is that the procedure can be stopped after the first of two steps of the first part can be undone. Maybe. It's unproved, experimental, and based on anecdotal evidence. But anything to stop an abortion, even if it requires physicians to actively lie to patients.

Early in June, 42 elected prosecutors representing jurisdictions in 24 states, including Georgia, Alabama, Texas, and Ohio, issued a statement vowing not to enforce extreme anti-abortion restrictions passed in their states.