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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think America is a frightening place to be a woman right now?

457 replies

BornSicky · 24/06/2011 23:05

Pregnant women facing murder charges

This is bullying at a nightmarish level.

I find it foul and despicable that women are being villified in such a way. How did the Christian right-wing become so powerful?

Truly, truly scary.

How can these bad laws (including the new "inspections" (read closures) of abortion clinics in Kansas) come to be passed? How can they be stopped?

OP posts:
ChristinedePizan · 24/06/2011 23:09

I don't know but by god that is the most frightening article I've ever read about the US :(

sunshineandbooks · 24/06/2011 23:17

Terrible. Very very scary indeed.

America seems to embody the madonna/whore complex today. Women either have to be ridiculously 'beautiful', fashionable and available or they have to be pure to a degree that the Virgin Mary would have failed.

I know there are very enlightened people in America who are as horrified by this as I am, but the moral majority types really do seem to be taking over at the moment.

Sadly, this being AIBU, I'm pretty sure someone will come on here and say the poor woman deserves everything she gets because of her cocaine use. I simply hope they are never in a position where they are judged so harshly. This sets a very scary precedent indeed. What next? Pregnant women who smoke, or who are overweight, or who had a glass of wine with dinner one night, or who ate blue cheese, who dyed their hair...

RobF · 24/06/2011 23:18

It is a bit harsh, but I've got little sympathy for people who take cocaine. Even less for women who take it while pregnant. If she had a habit she couldn't control, she should have had an abortion, rather than risking giving birth to a drug addicted baby.

sunshineandbooks · 24/06/2011 23:21

Oh look, here's the first one.

SinicalSal · 24/06/2011 23:22

See how only one man has been charged under the laws, but 300 women. (SC)

ChristinedePizan · 24/06/2011 23:24

Rob - are you always this stupid or just on a Friday night?

SinicalSal · 24/06/2011 23:26

Dunno Rob, drug addicted babies can recover. She may feel it's worth the risk and recovery for a chance at life.

Original poster
BornSicky · 24/06/2011 23:28

RobF But, that response just highlights even further how horrific it is. Abortion clinics are being closed down, access to family planning clinics that promote contraception are losing their funding and being picketted/boycotted.

They don't want women to have abortions, because they want to control every aspect of a woman's fertility and life.

Addicts who are pregnant deserve support and assistance, not prison sentences when the system or the state fails to help them.

OP posts:
ZXEightyMum · 24/06/2011 23:28

and this is why I am moving my family to Canada instead of the US with the no right to choose in Kansas and all.

I'm fucking off somewhere else with my lottery millions which is a shame because I wanted to live near Carmel Sad

TruthSweet · 24/06/2011 23:30

Why does a 15 year old who is pg, suffers a still birth and takes cocaine deserve being in jail for the rest of her life?

What about the male who raped her (statutory rape at least) at 15?

What kind of life do you have to have to think that taking cocaine is a good thing at 15?

She is a child herself, who was protecting her?

millie30 · 24/06/2011 23:32

Exactly TruthSweet. Maybe the authorities should care more about BORN children like the girl in question, instead of the bizarre obsession they seem to have with foetuses.

ChristinedePizan · 24/06/2011 23:33

And abortion is illegal in Mississippi anyway. So that was never an option

TheFeministsWife · 24/06/2011 23:34

Absolutely shocking! Shock Have been reading a lot more of these cases recently it's truly unbelievable in the supposed "free world" that this sort of thing is going on. It's like reading about somewhere in the Middle East. Why on earth isn't Obama doing anything? This sort of thing going on under Bush's rule I could understand he was a right religious nut, but Obama comes across as, as left wing as you can get. Sad

Original poster
BornSicky · 24/06/2011 23:36

SO, potentially the girl was forced to continue with a pregnancy she wasn't mature or well enough to manage...

it just gets worse.

OP posts:
ronshar · 24/06/2011 23:37

It comes back to the fudamental issue.
Never let religious zealouts near the statute book.

ChristinedePizan · 24/06/2011 23:40

Obama has a steep and difficult hill to climb in a country where abortion is considered very wrong by a lot of people. If he'd put it in his manifesto, there is no way he would have been elected.

TruthSweet · 24/06/2011 23:42

It's like that proto-pregnant thing that Bush was pushing (I think that was what it was called or were they 'pre-pregnant'??) years ago. All women past puberty and before menopause had to abstain from alcohol/smoking/drinking/drugs/deli meat/soft cheese/life.... in case they got pg or were raped and conceived. I remember huge swathes of US Babycenter were up in arms that even single women if they were fertile had to live as though pg just in case they had the misfortune to be raped at the wrong point in their cycle. Heaven forbid you terminate for the double whammy of carrying rapist's baby and the baby having got listeriosis from that dodgy lunchmeat Hmm

ronshar · 24/06/2011 23:44

Americans are a bit wierd arent they sometimes.
Who would seriously stand for that crap?

TruthSweet · 24/06/2011 23:44

OK that read like it was enshrined in law, it wasn't. I believe it was 'just' floated as an idea to reduce fetal deformities/problems from women getting drunk before finding out they were pg, smoking, eating a sandwich from Subway, etc, etc.

Original poster
BornSicky · 24/06/2011 23:45

Agreed christine

There are also female politicians that are highly anti-choice. I think they do women a great disservice when it's proven time and time again that more women die when abortion is illegal, because women will seek abortion services legal or not if they need to or have to.

OP posts:
Original poster
BornSicky · 24/06/2011 23:46

truthsweet I remember that proposal. I think it's clear that it's now made it into law...

OP posts:
ronshar · 24/06/2011 23:46

They should have a good look at Islam if that is the kind of life they want females to be living.

Why do men feel they have the right to tell us what to do.
Idiots.

millie30 · 24/06/2011 23:49

Ah yes, Bush, the renowned prolifer who executed more people than any other governor in modern American history. What is wrong with these people!

TruthSweet · 24/06/2011 23:53

Horrifying isn't it. A law designed to protect pregnant women from harm (doesn't a significant proportion of DV/DA start when the woman is pg?) is used as a stick to beat women with.

Why aren't men who father children whilst drinking/smoking/doing drugs prosecuted? After all those things do damage sperm so they aren't giving the child the best possible genetics they could be if they abstained from drink/cigarettes/drugs/tight pants/saunas.......

It takes two to make a baby but only one to be prosecuted it it goes wrong?

I can imagine women with ante-natal depression not saying anything to their HCP just in case they miscarry/have a still birth/anomaly and they get blamed/accused of harming the baby.

ZXEightyMum · 24/06/2011 23:55

I don't think that that the U.S was ever a good place to be a woman really.

This site is a piss-take but it is depressing that they have sooooo much material to go on in terms of hateful attitudes.