Rennie Taria Gibbs was 15 years old in 2006 when she got pregnant. When she miscarried at 36 weeks of gestation, prosecutors "discovered" Gibbs had a cocaine habit - which makes you wonder which antichoice busybody at the hospital violated her confidential medical records -and they charged her with murder under Mississipi's rarely used "depraved-heart" law.
Her trial - continued multiple times since 2006 - was scheduled to commence in February 2012.
Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.
Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.
"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."
She is not alone. Christian Sharia (state religious law) in the US exists, and it is used to punish women.
It should come as no surprise that Rennie Gibbs is Black, as repressive laws in the US mostly target, and are applied to, Latino and Afro-Americans.
2 comments:
These laws are being used against pregnant women, or those who COULD get pregnant (thank YOU, Rush Limbaugh!) or who have been pregnant. However, it is apparently acceptable for the religious right to advocate for taxpayer-funded internet porn as their price for allowing women to monitor and protect their own reproductive abilities.
As reported, according to Rush Limbaugh's rant against Ms. Sandra Fluke (which has NOT been repudiated by Republicans): "(Rush) will pay for her birth control if she will videotape her activities and post them online for (him)". This is disturbing enough, but what if the female was underage? That would be internet child porn, would it not?
Dr. D, if there's one thing the increasing admission of atheism shows, misogyny and its intersections income/'race' is an all-sectors bloodsport. "sciense sez so" is neck and neck with "gawd sez so" for shit justifications to bully/persecute.
I've read that the American 'Civil War' never ended, it just moved into the gavels of legislators and judiciary in the states. It's just bad form these days to eliminate the uppity sorts for honest racist reasons and with casual bullets in the streets. Handy they came up with prisons as slave-magnacies as a substitute. Do reasons for chaining people in there really matter anymore? Especially if you can do it while they're in labour?
Still, charging the mother with murder makes complete sense when it's backdooring legislation for making all aborted fetuses callous murder. So, if a pregnant woman in jail has a miscarriage OR delivers an infant that dies outside the womb soon after OR is found to be malformed in some way, does that mean she gets charged with more crimes of injury for having the bad form to be pregnant while convicted?
Canaries in the anti-abortion coalmine suffocating before our very eyes.
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