AlterNet has a really disturbing article about the case of Christy Lynn Freeman, a woman who was found with the bodies of several stillborn fetuses in her home, and the meaning and consequences of such a prosecution.
Christy Lynn Freeman, a 37-year-old, Ocean City, Md., woman, was recently charged with murder after delivering a stillborn child under Maryland’s as-yet-untested Viable Fetus Act of 2005.
Worcester County prosecutor Joel J. Todd charged Freeman with murder and a district court judge held her without bail for allegedly performing her own late-term abortion. Though these charges were eventually dropped, Freeman’s case illustrates the coercive potential of legislation that gives fetuses rights at the expense of women. [. . .]
The medical examiner’s preliminary report confirmed Freeman’s story that the 26-week-old fetus was born dead. Nevertheless, Freeman was charged with first- and second-degree murder and manslaughter for allegedly inducing the stillbirth.
Maryland’s Viable Fetus Act provides for prosecution for the murder of a viable fetus if the perpetrator “intended to cause the death of the viable fetus, intended to cause serious physical injury to the viable fetus, or wantonly or recklessly disregarded the likelihood that the person’s actions would cause the death of or serious physical injury to the viable fetus.”
Freeman is now being held for the murder of an infant that she allegedly gave live birth to. Neonaticide is an issue that I have previously discussed, and so will set to the side for now. It’s the topic of stillbirth that I’m really interested in here.
What we’re looking at is an attempt to legally control the way that women treat their own bodies, under the guise of looking out for a “baby.” In the book Killing The Black Body, Dorothy Roberts compares these kinds of laws to the slave-era practice of digging holes just large enough for a pregnant slave to fit her belly when she laid face down to be whipped. I also see the excruciating parallel. Both of these practices are about trying to separate the fetus from a woman’s body for the purpose of valuing the fetus over the woman. Both of these practices make the pregnant women even more aware of the ways in which their bodies connected to their fetuses, while erasing the connection for the general public. And both are about punishing and degrading women.
Of course, I think that if a woman decides to carry her pregnancy to term, she should do her best to behave in a way that gives her fetus the best chance of a healthy life. But punishing women when they don’t? On what grounds and under what circumstances? Under what right? The article cites the case of a woman who is in jail for giving birth to a stillborn fetus, because they found methamphetamine in her system. The charge against her is murder. Should we be throwing these women in jail or, oh, I don’t know, providing them with treatment? And where do we draw the line? Pot? Tobacco? Alcohol? Caffeine? Not wearing a seatbelt? Disobeying a doctor’s orders of bed rest?
What this type of legislation is doing is not only establishing a fetus as a human being with full rights– it’s punishing women for things that they do with their own bodies, because it has the potential to affect the littler body living inside them. What we, as a society, seem to regularly forget is that pregnant women’s bodies still belong to the women. Not to the fetus. And not to the government.
So this case is about a hell of a lot more than just Freeman, who is clearly a women in need of psychological care. It’s about a lot more than protecting mentally disturbed women, although that is important. It’s about the right of every pregnant woman to be able to control her own body and not have to hand that right over to the government. It’s about making sure that they don’t go to jail when they fuck up and harm themselves. It’s about having the same rights as every other human being, regardless of medical condition.
Quite simply, it’s about justice. And not in the way these prosecutors and lawmakers seem to believe.
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I plan to post a more useful and thoughtful comment later, but for now I’ll just say thanks. This was a wonderful post.
Thanks!
Excellent post! There’s a great discussion of these issues, making similar theoretical points with different examples in Susan Bordo’s “Are Mothers Persons?” (in her book _Unbearable Weight_)
It seems to me that there is a fine line between justice and the law. Justice isn’t always black and white, and takes into consideration the whole situation. Law by its nature is man made and so it has boundaries. One law may not provide for all eventualities, and though its focus may be for preventing/protecting one thing, the circumstances surrounding the protection of such things is ambiguous. It is scary to think that the foetus is more legally provided for at that time of the mother’s pregnancy than the mother is. That is so much at odds for instance with medicine, where the survival of the mother is paramount. This law in Maryland does indeed elevate a foetus to the status of full human-being, and punishes women for circumstances that could be out of their control. What could happen to a woman who has a natural stillbirth, but because she might have taken something small, usually harmless, she killed her baby. It is scary, wonderful post.
Glad to see you’re writing about this and it’s a great post. It’s an issue about which I am very concerned. I do have one nit to pick:
think that if a woman decides to carry her pregnancy to term, she should do her best to behave in a way that gives her fetus the best chance of a healthy life.
Framing the fact that women carry to term sometimes despite a drug problem or inability to care for the fetus when it’s born as an issue of choice is dangerous. There are a variety of circumstances that lead women to carry to term that don’t involve choice. Lack of access to abortion or of money to pay for abortions. A desire to have a baby or a fervent belief that abortion is wrong. Denial that the pregnancy exists. While I agree at root that in ideal circumstances, women should do what they can to ensure healthy birth outcomes, framing it as an issue of choice and as an issue of what women “should” do continues the very thing your are criticizing: pitting the woman against the fetus to privilege the fetus over the woman.
Good point, bean. I chose the word “decides” specifically in an attempt to frame the issue as pertaining to those women who do make an active choice to continue their pregnancies. You make a good point that the words could also be taken to mean that all women who carry their pregnancies to term have made an active choice, when that is not the case. I should have been more careful in my wording there, and I stand corrected.
Thanks, Cara. And I really *really* think you’re writing about great stuff. Keep it up.
If you mentioned this, I apologize, but I didn’t notice it: I wrote about this too, and one of the (many) fucked up things about this case is that the law in question specifically exempts the mother from being charged by this law. The statute specifically states: “Nothing in this section applies to an act or failure to act of a pregnant woman with regard to her own fetus”, so… uh… how in the hell can they charge her with anything under the Viable Fetus Act when, you know… it’s pretty clear that she can’t be charged with anything under the Viable Fetus Act?
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