Women, you may be closer than you think to losing autonomy over your own bodies.
In early March, an expectant mother of twins from Salt Lake City, Utah, who refused to have a Caesarean section against the wishes of her physician, was charged with murder when one of the twins was stillborn.
The woman was charged under Utah’s criminal homicide statute, which the state Supreme Court ruled in January covers children at all stages of development, barring pregnancies terminated through a legal abortion, Cnn.com reported.
Previously, the law has been used to press charges against women who kill or seriously injure their unborn children through drug use. However, the law has never before been used to prosecute a woman for refusing medical care.
The Cnn.com story reported that Melissa Ann Rowland refused to have a C-section, despite her doctor’s warning that the babies’ heart rates were slowing, stating to her doctor that she did not want to be cut “from breast to pubic bone.”
Although the number of C-sections performed in the United States is rising rapidly, the International Caesarean Awareness Network reported in 2002 that nearly one quarter of all live births are performed via the surgical method, many women still wish to have a natural childbirth.
“Many women’s health advocates have long viewed Caesareans as epitomizing the male-dominated, overly medicalized birth process,” said Andrea E. Tone, director of graduate studies in the school of history, technology and society at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, in a Dec. 6, 2002, Washington Post article.
Many obstetricians also believe that C-sections pose more risk to the health of the mother and require a longer period of recuperation than do vaginal deliveries.
Nevertheless, there are risks involved with vaginal deliveries such as muscle damage to the pelvic floor, which lead some expectant mothers to opt for a Caesarean.
“It’s a big problem,” said Linda Brubaker, director of female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago, the Washington Post article reported. “Twenty to 30 percent of women become incontinent after a single vaginal delivery. One out of 20 have an anal sphincter rupture, which can cause bowel incontinence.”
With such controversy over the safety of various methods of delivery, and with the possibility of life-altering complications with either method, how could anyone presume to make a decision like this for an expectant mother?
Well, legally this can be done by granting unborn children personhood, and thus a right to life that supercedes the wishes of the mother, which is what the Utah law that Rowland has been charged under seeks to do. Similarly, a bill that seeks to make harming a fetus while committing a violent crime a separate offense from harming the mother, passed with a vote of 61-38 in the Senate on March 25, the Winston-Salem Journal reported on March 26.
The bill has caused a great deal of controversy on the Hill because it also defines when life begins, stating that an “unborn child” is a child in utero, which it says “means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage in development, who is carried in the womb.”
President Bush has pledged to sign this bill when it reaches the Oval Office, in an attempt, I suppose, to change laws “as minds are persuaded” about the rights of the unborn.
However, my mind is not persuaded.
I see this legislation and the pending trial in Utah as an effort to chip away at the autonomy women currently enjoy over their bodies in the United States. These rulings are bills are stepping stones that may one day be used as precedents to overturn the verdict that gave women the right to choose, Roe v. Wade.
We must insist that the rights of both women and men, to plan their lives and families, and to make decisions of the most personal nature, remain in their own hands.
How can we do this?
I’m sure you already know, but there’s no harm in repeating it – vote. And not just in the presidential elections, but in Senate and Congressional elections and state and local elections. Then hold your representatives accountable by writing them and letting them know where you stand on issues such as reproductive rights.
The time is now. Without action, our reproductive rights will be limited.