Following the devastating Democrat rout last week, commentators on both sides of the political spectrum have proclaimed the “war on women” battle cry dead.
While abortion enthusiasts may now be forced to retire that exact terminology, and while they may also be forced to temper their hysterical push for free contraceptives (also because the new Republican “let’s offer them over-the-counter” counter-offensive terrifies Planned Parenthood), rest assured they will repackage the message.
In fact, they already have.
The abortion lobby has pushed a version of this forever, but they revealed their next PR campaign in a New York Times op ed on November 8.
Their previous version was that mothers procuring back alley abortions will be thrown in prison should abortion be made illegal.
Clarke Forsythe of Americans United for Life handily refuted that when liberal Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn tried to corner me in 2006.
Basically, Forsythe responded that there are no known cases of aborting mothers being prosecuted before Roe v Wade legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, and the law has always considered women second victims in abortion. Prosecuting them would circumvent the real goal of nabbing the perpetrators, i.e., the abortionists.
The new and improved meme is that pro-life laws will be used to send miscarrying mothers to prison. See graphic above, referenced below…
This argument has also been out for awhile, but abortion proponents are ratcheting it up as a major offensive now that former claims are felling on deaf ears.
In the NYT, Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin of the pro-abortion and misnomered group National Advocates for Pregnant Women, used skewed reports to make their case.
If the examples Paltrow and Flavin gave sound too incredible to be true, they are. Here’s just one:
In Louisiana, a woman who went to the hospital for unexplained vaginal bleeding was locked up for over a year on charges of second-degree murder before medical records revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at 11 to 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The real story? In a 2013 report Paltrow and Flavin went into greater detail, still being coy and adding some dramatic flair. But what really happened nevertheless becomes clear:
In Louisiana, Michelle Marie Greenup, a twenty-six-year-old African American woman, went to a hospital complaining of bleeding and stomach pain. Doctors suspected that she had recently given birth and contacted law enforcement authorities. After repeated police interrogations, Greenup “confessed” that the baby was born alive and it died because she had failed to provide it with proper care.
Greenup was charged with second-degree murder and incarcerated. Eventually counsel for Greenup obtained her medical records, which revealed that the fetus could not have been older than between 11 to 15 weeks and that prior to the miscarriage Greenup had been given Depo-Provera, a contraceptive injection that may cause a miscarriage if administered to a woman who is already pregnant.
Greenup was finally released, but only after she agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor violation of a public health law that regulates disposal of human remains. There is no indication that the human remains law was intended to apply to pregnant women confronted with a miscarriage
So Greenup gave birth at home and confessed to authorities that her baby died due to her neglect, after which she dumped his or her dead body.
There was a there there. Paltrow and Flavin’s colorful rendition is not plausible. I’m confident this holds true for the rest of their examples in the NYT.
Paltrow and Flavin also took issue with mothers being prosecuted for intentionally harming their babies prenatally.
But why not? If mothers are prosecuted for harming their children post-birth, they should be held just as liable pre-birth.
If courts are able to determine whether mothers are negligent or violent toward born children, courts can certainly make the same determination regarding harm inflicted on preborn children.
Mothers should be held responsible for drugging their preborn babies, just as they are for postborn babies. Or plying preborns with alcohol. The route of administration is simply different.
[tweet_box]Mothers shld be prosecuted 4 drugging preborn babies or plying them w alcohol, just as 4 postborns.[/tweet_box]
Throwing in the kitchen sink, Paltrow and Flavin complained pro-life laws are forcing pregnant mothers to undergo caesarian sections against their will.
But there are indeed extreme cases when higher authorities should step in when mothers refuse surgery that would save the lives of their children.
As a labor and delivery RN, I witnessed several examples, for instance a psychiatric patient who tried to refuse a c-section to save her baby’s life. She was eventually overruled, rightfully so.
by Kelli
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.