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The policing of pregnant women getting out of control and scary.
The GOP has made the subjection of women's reproductive rights a main goal. Unfortunately our party did not stand up for women strongly enough. In fact some Democrats through the years tried to pass extreme laws of their own. I never did understand, I guess trying to out-tough the other side.
One example: Back in the 1990's Tom Daschle tried to pass a bill which was endorsed by Bill Clinton. It was a shocking bill for a Democrat to propose.
Women's choice advocates need to be aware of the Daschle Abortion Bill 1997
"Daschle's so-called compromise bill, as quoted in the New York Times, permits an exception to the ban for `a severely debilitating disease or impairment specifically caused by the pregnancy (emphasis added),' but makes no provision for a pre-existing, life- and health-threatening `debilitating disease or impairment' that is being exacerbated by the pregnancy. This could include kidney disease, severe hypertension and some cancers. Nor does the Daschle bill allow for an abortion in cases of severe fetal abnormality where it is unlikely the fetus would live long outside the womb, even with technological support.
"The physician certification requirement and the potential loss of a medical license in the Daschle language invites government scrutiny of private medical matters and threatens doctor-patient confidentiality. The intent of this and other abortion ban bills is to control women and to limit their ability to make critical reproductive decisions that affect their families, their health and their lives. These bills represent the ultimate in Congressional arrogance," Gandy charged.
The bill apparently was endorsed by President Clinton, according to this NPR newscast in 1997.
It's getting worse now with the extremists on the right trying to get even more outrageous in their efforts to treat women as 2nd-class citizens. And still not enough on the other side taking strong stances to protect these women.
‘The Policing of Pregnant Women': Texans Demand Obstetric Care In County Jails
Shela Williams stood before the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) Thursday morning holding a little white box of mementos from her son Israel’s funeral in August—a funeral she was not allowed to attend because Israel was born, and died, while Williams was incarcerated in a central Texas jail and in the custody of Travis County sheriffs.
Williams, who lives in Austin, is part of a coalition of reproductive and racial justice advocates who are demanding better standards of care for the 500 or so pregnant Texans—most whom are Black and Latina—incarcerated in Texas county jails each month.
“Williams was treated very badly,” Coleman told the commission, explaining that Williams, who was 19 weeks pregnant when she was incarcerated on a parole violation, had a high-risk pregnancy. During her two-month incarceration, Williams never received the obstetric care she needed. With the right treatment, Coleman said, Israel might be alive today.
More from RH Reality Check.
Miscarriage Isn’t Illegal, But It’s Increasingly Treated With Suspicion
In Indiana, for example, a woman named Purvi Patel is facing a possible sentence of decades in prison for not producing a live baby. Patel admitted to taking abortion-causing pills, which induced labor; she was caught when she went to the emergency room to get help for the bleeding. The fetus was found dead in a dumpster. The messed-up thing about the situation is that the State of Indiana is so determined to put Patel in prison that they’ve hit her with two conflicting charges. If they determine that the baby was born alive, they’re going to prosecute her for “neglect.” But if she successfully terminated the pregnancy, she’s getting hit with “fetal murder of an unborn child.” Heads, you lose; tails, they win.
But the situation is even more frightening than that. Even if you don’t try to end your own pregnancy, you could be subject to an investigation for being insufficiently excited about having a baby.
Take the case of Christine Taylor, who was arrested in Iowa for merely saying out loud to a nurse that she had considered abortion. Taylor had fallen down a flight of stairs; when she went to a private hospital, she was accused of trying to abort her (unharmed) fetus, even though there was literally no evidence of this beyond her very understandable concerns about having a baby with her estranged husband.
And from the New York Times this week:
Pregnant, and No Civil Rights
In Iowa, a pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs was reported to the police after seeking help at a hospital. She was arrested for “attempted fetal homicide.”
In Utah, a woman gave birth to twins; one was stillborn. Health care providers believed that the stillbirth was the result of the woman’s decision to delay having a cesarean. She was arrested on charges of fetal homicide.
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.
Florida has had a number of such cases. In one, a woman was held prisoner at a hospital to prevent her from going home while she appeared to be experiencing a miscarriage. She was forced to undergo a cesarean. Neither the detention nor the surgery prevented the pregnancy loss, but they did keep this mother from caring for her two small children at home. While a state court later found the detention unlawful, the opinion suggested that if the hospital had taken her prisoner later in her pregnancy, its actions might have been permissible.
In another case, a woman who had been in labor at home was picked up by a sheriff, strapped down in the back of an ambulance, taken to a hospital, and forced to have a cesarean she did not want. When this mother later protested what had happened, a court concluded that the woman’s personal constitutional rights “clearly did not outweigh the interests of the State of Florida in preserving the life of the unborn child.”
Anti-abortion reasoning has also provided the justification for arresting pregnant women who experience depression and have attempted suicide. A 22-year-old in South Carolina who was eight months pregnant attempted suicide by jumping out a window. She survived despite suffering severe injuries. Because she lost the pregnancy, she was arrested and jailed for the crime of homicide by child abuse.
My question is which party is taking a stand for the rights of women to have reproductive choice.
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Things drop quickly around here lately. 
