According to Kristi Burton, the spokeswoman for Amendment 48, it's about "the power of truth." The truth, however, is that this amendment will be devastating to pregnant women and dangerous for both maternal and fetal health.
Constitutional law ensures that people — including pregnant women — have the right to make their own health-care decisions. Yet, it is clear that if fetuses are recognized as legal persons, pregnant women could very likely lose these constitutionally protected rights. That's because laws like this one enable the state to intervene in pregnant women's lives.
For example, in Washington, D.C., doctors sought a court order to force Ayesha Madyun to have a C-section, claiming the fetus faced a 50 to 75 percent chance of infection if not delivered surgically. The court said, "All that stood between the Madyun fetus and its independent existence, separate from its mother, was — put simply — a doctor's scalpel." With that, the court granted the order. When the procedure was done, there was no evidence of infection.
In Florida, Laura Pemberton wanted to have a vaginal birth after a previous C-section. Her doctors believed that her fetus had a right to be born by a C-section. A sheriff came to her house, took her into custody while she was in active labor, strapped her legs together and forced her to go to a hospital, where they were holding a hearing about the rights of the fetus. A lawyer was appointed for her fetus but not for her. She was forced to have a C-section. Pemberton subsequently gave birth vaginally to four more children, defying the medical and court predictions of harm.
In each case, state intervention was based on the claim that fetuses had separate legal rights — exactly the ones Amendment 48 would establish in Colorado. But these forced interventions or deprivations of liberty did not actually protect mothers or babies.
If the amendment passes, Colorado's juvenile courts will have jurisdiction whenever doctors or family members disagree with a pregnant woman's medical decisions. A woman's right to bodily integrity, due process, and even life itself will disappear in the face of fetal personhood claims.
To oppose the recognition of fetal personhood as a matter of state constitutional law is not to deny the value of potential life as matter of religious belief, emotional conviction or personal experience. Rather, it is to recognize that rewriting the state constitution to include human beings from the moment of fertilization is to exclude women from the moment they become pregnant.
L. Indra Lusero is LUZ Reproductive Justice Think Tank J.D. Candidate,
University of Denver School of Law, and Lynn M. Paltrow is executive director of
National Advocates for Pregnant Women.
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