September 13, 2011
Criminalization of Pregnant Women and Girls

This article shows the anti-abortion laws are doing just what we feared - criminalizing pregnant women.

The article begins as follows:

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 became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

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.

See the rest of the article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges

-Gailya Paliga
NC NOW

Posted by Admin at September 13, 2011 12:08 AM