Her Body, Our Laws
Page 17
22. “Miscarriage,” Medline Plus, reviewed by Cynthia D. White, MD, November 16, 2014, http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001488.htm.
23. OBOS Pregnancy & Birth Contributors, “Miscarriage in the First Trimester,” Our Bodies, Our Selves, April 9, 2014, http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/health-info/miscarriage-in-the-first-trimester/.
24. As applied in homicide cases, the term corpus delecti has at least two component elements: the fact of death, and the criminal act or agency of another person as the cause thereof. “Homicide,” American Jurisprudence, second ed., section 4.
25. Michelle Oberman, “Cristina’s World: Lessons from El Salvador’s Ban on Abortion,” Stanford Law and Policy Review 24 (2013): 271, http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/facpubs/794/; Tracy Wilkinson, “El Salvador Jails Women for Miscarriages and Stillbirths,” Los Angeles Times, April 15, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/world/great-reads/la-fg-c1-el-salvador-women-20150415-story.html.
26. Another study confirmed the disproportionate reporting patterns by doctors treating patients at public hospitals, and suggested three possible explanations. First, public health institutions are more likely to treat indigent women and adolescents who often resort to unsafe, low-cost, and readily detectable abortion methods (e.g., insertion of foreign objects). Second, private-sector providers have an explicit profit motive to protect their individual patients’ privacy and avoid legal inconveniences. Finally, because public health-care workers are subject to governmental oversight and are susceptible to shifting ministerial politics, they may be more fearful of reprisal if they do not comply with prevailing governmental ideology or policies. McNaughton et al., “Patient Privacy and Conflicting Legal and Ethical Obligations in El Salvador.”
27. Dr. Bernadette Rosario (pseudonym), in discussion with the author, March 2014. Transcription and notes on file with author.
28. Ibid.
29. Samantha Artiga, “Disparities in Health and Health Care: Five Key Questions and Answers,” Kaiser Family Foundation, August 12, 2016, http://kff.org/disparities-policy/issue-brief/disparities-in-health-and-health-care-five-key-questions-and-answers/.
30. Details of this case are drawn from the trial transcript, on file with author.
31. Ibid.
32. Dr. Marvin Diaz (pseudonym), in El Salvador, May 23, 2012, in discussion with the author. Transcription and notes on file with the author.
33. Jessica Alpert, “El Salvador Virtual Jewish History Tour,” Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/el-salvador-virtual-jewish-history-tour#life, accessed May 31, 2017.
34. For a detailed history of Conversos in the Iberian Peninsula, see Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002); for an analysis of the effect of Conversos on Judaism and Christianity, see also Jose Faur, In the Shadow of History: Jews and Conversos at the Dawn of Modernity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).
35. Dr. Marvin Diaz, in discussion with the author. In asserting that the defendant’s mother pressed charges against her daughter, Dr. Diaz made the common mistake of confusing civil and criminal charges. Even if her mother had found the baby and called the police, as opposed to simply permitting them to enter and search her apartment, in criminal actions, it is the state that presses criminal charges.
36. Citizen’s Coalition for the Decriminalization of Abortion on Grounds of Health, Ethics and Fetal Anomaly, El Salvador, “From Hospital to Jail: The Impact on Women of El Salvador’s Total Criminalization of Abortion,” Reproductive Health Matters 22, no. 44 (2014): 52–60, http://www.rhm-elsevier.com/article/S0968–8080(14)44797–9/fulltext.
37. Ibid. Of women arrested in abortion-related cases, 46.5 percent involved cases of advanced pregnancy and resulted in charges of simple or aggravated homicide.
38. Lauren Bohn, “El Salvador’s ‘Abortion Lawyer,’” New York Times, September 12, 2016, http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/el-salvadors-abortion-lawyer/.
39. See Rebecca G. Stephenson and Linda J. O’Connor, Obstetric and Gynecologic Care in Physical Therapy, 2nd ed. (Thorofare, NJ: Slack, 2000).
40. Dr. Anne Drapkin Lyerly, associate professor of social medicine and obstetrics and gynecology, University of North Carolina, in telephone discussion with the author on August 2, 2012.
41. Ibid.
42. To get a sense of the scope of Agrupación Ciudadana activities, see its website, at https://agrupacionciudadana.org.
43. Morena Herrera, in discussion with the author, June 2014.
44. Citizens’ Coalition for the Decriminalization of Abortion on Grounds of Health, Ethics and Fetal Anomaly, El Salvador, “From Hospital to Jail: The Impact on Women of El Salvador’s Total Criminalization of Abortion.”
45. The only women excluded were those whose cases were still on appeal, so their sentences were not yet final. Munoz, author interview.
46. Citizen’s Coalition for the Decriminalization of Abortion on Grounds of Health, Ethics and Fetal Anomaly, El Salvador, “From Hospital to Jail: The Impact on Women of El Salvador’s Total Criminalization of Abortion.”
47. Liz Ford, “El Salvador Pardons Woman Jailed After Birth Complications Led to the Death of Child,” Guardian, January 22, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jan/22/el-salvador-pardons-woman-guadalupe-stillbirth-miscarriage-anti-abortion-laws.
48. Marisela Gloria Moran, “Seis mujeres libres de condenas por aborto,” Contrapunto, September 20, 2016, http://www.contrapunto.com.sv/sociedad/ddhh/seis-mujeres-libres-de-condenas-por-aborto/1717.
49. “El Salvador: liberan a María Teresa Rivera, condenada a 40 años tras un aborto,” BBC World, May 21, 2016, http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2016/05/160520_america_latina_salvador_liberan_maria_teresa_rivera_aborto_dgm.
50. Kathy Bougher, “Salvadoran Council Uses Poverty to Justify Keeping Las 17 in Prison,” Rewire News, January 7, 2015, https://rewire.news/article/2015/01/07/salvadoran-council-uses-poverty-justify-keeping-las-17-prison/.
51. As translated in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1954), 458.
52. Nina Strochlic, “On the Front Lines of El Salvador’s Underground Abortion Economy,” Foreign Policy, January 3, 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/03/on-the-front-lines-of-el-salvadors-underground-abortion-economy/.
53. Twenty-four percent of pregnancies occurred in women from fifteen to nineteen years old. The specific fertility rate of women from fifteen to nineteen years old was eighty-nine per one thousand. Seven of ten adolescents with sexual experience had a pregnancy, and 8.9 percent of this group had had a previous pregnancy. See Pan American Health Organization, “Health in the Americas: El Salvador,” 2012, http://www.paho.org/salud-en-las-americas-2012/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=36%3Ael-salvador&catid=21%3Acountry-chapters&Itemid=145&lang=en.
54. Anastasia Moloney, “Rape, Abortion Ban Drives Pregnant Teens to Suicide in El Salvador,” Reuters Health News, November 12, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-el-salvador-suicide-teens-idUSKCN0IW1YI20141112.
55. Carlos Mayora, in discussion with the author, June 5, 2014.
56. This description is taken from the facts of “Manuela’s case,” which resulted in an appeal to the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights in Peru. She died in prison of cancer, which the prison doctors misdiagnosed and failed to treat. Charlotte Krol, “Are El Salvador’s Extreme Anti-Abortion Laws Justified?,” Telegraph, February 14, 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/elsalvador/11412550/Are-El-Salvadors-extreme-anti-abortion-laws-justified.html.
57. See Ferguson v. City of Charleston, 532 U.S. 67 (2001) (holding that a urine test conducted by the hospital in conjunction with law enforcement absent the patient’s consent was a violation of the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches). The use of criminal sanctions in the public hospital setting disproportionately affects poor, minority women. See, general
ly, Dorothy E. Roberts, “Punishing Drug Addicts Who Have Babies: Women of Color, Equality, and the Right of Privacy,” Harvard Law Review 104 (1991): 1419 (arguing that given the historical context of devaluing black mothers, prosecuting these women violates their equal protection and privacy rights regarding reproductive choices); Michele Goodwin, “Prosecuting the Womb,” George Washington Law Review 76 (2008): 1657, 1661 (describing how fetal drug laws are inconsistent, ineffective, and exempt reproductive practices by affluent groups that are equally risky to the unborn fetus).
Chapter 3: The Reddest State
1. See CNN Election Center 2008, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/individual/#mapPOK and Politico’s 2012; Oklahoma Presidential Results, http://www.politico.com/2012-election/results/president/oklahoma/, last updated 11/19/12.
2. The AUL’s Life List report card is compiled by looking at abortion-related measures by state. Four states earned AUL’s 2017 All-Star Status for their implementation of legislation written by AUL. See AUL’s 2017 Life List, http://www.aul.org/2017-life-list/.
3. Joshua Holland, “When Southern Baptists Were Pro-Choice,” Moyers & Co., July 2014, http://billmoyers.com/2014/07/17/when-southern-baptists-were-pro-choice/.
4. Edward Lee Pitts, “Successful State Strategies Saving Babies,” The World, January 22, 2014, https://world.wng.org/2014/01/successful_state_strategies_saving_babies.
5. In 1910, Tony Lauinger’s ancestor founded PennWell Corporation, a privately held company in the fifth generation of continuous family ownership. The company today has over 600 employees across offices worldwide, with 343 at its headquarters in Tulsa. His family has endowed Georgetown University with a Library Fund to foster Catholic values through the acquisition of current and retrospective books, journals, periodicals, audio-visuals, computer archives, and other library materials supportive of the teachings of Magisterium on the issues of abortion, contraception, infanticide, homosexuality, assisted suicide, euthanasia, reproductive technologies, and other similar issues related to marriage, family, human sexuality, human life, and bioethics.
6. Kristen Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
7. Ibid., 128.
8. For details about the paper and its circulation, see http://www.baptistmessenger.com.
9. Chris Doyle, “Rose Day at 25,” Baptist Messenger, February 3, 2016, https://www.baptistmessenger.com/rose-day-at-25/.
10. Bernest Cain, in discussion with the author, July 2013.
11. Andrew Spiropoulus, in discussion with the author, June 2013.
12. See “Timeline: Oklahoma Abortion Legislation at a Glance,” Oklahoman, November 4, 2013, http://newsok.com/article/3901078.
13. For a detailed overview of Trisomy 18, see http://www.trisomy18.org/what-is-trisomy-18/.
14. Mike Reynolds, in discussion with the author, June 2013.
15. Ryan Kiesel, in discussion with the author, June 2013.
16. “Tom Smith,” in discussion with the author, June 2013.
17. Kiesel, author interview.
18. Kris Steele, in discussion with the author, June 2013.
Chapter 4: The Abortion-Minded Woman and the Law
1. Lawrence Finer, Lori Frohwirth, Lindsay Dauphinee, Susheela Singh, and Ann Moore, “Reasons US Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 37 no. 3 (2005): 110–18, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/psrh/full/3711005.pdf.
2. Adoption lurks in the corners of any serious conversation about abortion, and I recognized Chisko’s tacit reference to it here. I don’t discuss adoption in this book. In a world where abortion is legal, issues surrounding adoption—its regulation, its impact on all those involved—are only tangentially relevant. Were abortion to become illegal, relinquishing a child for adoption would be the only legal way to avoid motherhood. In that world, adoption and its consequences would be at the heart of the conversation.
3. CBS/AP, “California to End Contentious ‘Maximum Family Grant’ Welfare Policy,” CBS SF Bay Area, June 14, 2016, http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/06/14/california-end-contentious-maximum-family-grant-welfare/.
4. Jamelle Bouie, “The Most Discriminatory Law in the Land,” Slate, June 17, 2014, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/06/the_maximum_family_grant_and_family_caps_a_racist_law_that_punishes_the.html.
5. Christine Jolls, Cass Sunstein, and Richard Thaler, “A Behavioral Approach to Law and Economics,” Stanford Law Review 50 (1998): 471.
6. Dan Kahan, “Gentle Nudges v. Hard Shoves: Solving the Sticky Norms Problem,” University of Chicago Law Review 67 (2000): 607.
7. Ibid., 626.
8. “Since the Hyde Amendment passed, only four states have voluntarily decided to use their funds to cover abortion. Another thirteen states are required to do so by court order, just as they would other forms of health care. Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia basically follow the Hyde Amendment as the congressman intended, with some small variations. One state, South Dakota, only pays for abortion when a woman’s life is in danger, but not in cases of rape and incest—an apparent violation of federal law.” See John Light, “Five Facts You Should Know About the Hyde Amendment,” Moyers & Company, January 25, 2013, http://billmoyers.com/content/five-facts-you-should-know-about-the-hyde-amendment/.
9. Tribune News Service, “Democrats Seek Repeal of Ban on Federal Funding of Abortion,” Chicago Tribune, August 16, 2016, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-abortion-federal-funding-ban-20160816-story.html.
10. Rebecca Blank, Christine George, and Rebecca London, “State Abortion Rates: The Impact of Policies, Providers, Politics, Demographics, and Economic Environment,” NBER Working Paper No. 4853 (September 1994), http://www.nber.org/papers/w4853.
11. Post-Roe laws from “Timeline of Abortion Laws and Events,” Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-abortion-timeline-story.html: “1976—Congress passes the Hyde Amendment, banning the use of Medicaid and other federal funds for abortions. The legislation is upheld by the Supreme Court in 1980. 1979—A Missouri requirement that abortions after the first trimester be performed in hospitals is found unconstitutional. Another law mandating parental consent is upheld. 1981—In Bellotti v. Baird, Supreme Court rules that pregnant minors can petition court for permission to have an abortion without parental notification. 1983—The court strikes down an Akron ordinance that requires doctors to give abortion patients antiabortion literature, imposes a 24-hour waiting period, requires abortions after the first trimester to be performed in a hospital, requires parental consent and requires the aborted fetus to be disposed of in a human manner. 1989—In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, a law in Washington State declaring that ‘life begins at conception’ and barring the use of public facilities for abortions is found unconstitutional. It marks the first time the Supreme Court does not explicitly reaffirm Roe v. Wade. 1992—In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court reaffirms Roe’s core holding that states may not ban abortions or interfere with a woman’s decision to have an abortion. The court does uphold mandatory 24-hour waiting periods and parental-consent laws.”
12. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).
13. Ibid., 878.
14. Niraj Chokshi, “Abortion Doctors Would Lose Medical Licenses Under New Oklahoma Bill,” Washington Post, April 23, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/23/this-is-our-proper-function-oklahoma-advances-measure-to-revoke-licenses-of-doctors-that-perform-abortions/?utm_term=.40a7b2951ca9.
15. The Data Team, “The Abortion Rate in America Falls to Its Lowest Level since Roe v. Wade,” Economist, January 18, 2017, http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-chart-16.
16. See debates between Michael New, Marshall Medoff, and Christopher Dennis; Michael New, “Analyzing the Effect of Anti-Abortion U.S. State Legislation in the Post Casey Era,
” State Politics and Policy Quarterly 11 (2011): 28–47; Marshall Medoff and Christopher Dennis, “Another Critical Review of New’s Reanalysis of the Impact of Antiabortion Legislation,” State Politics & Policy Quarterly 14, no. 3 (2014): 207–27; Marshall Medoff, “Biased Abortion Counseling Laws and Abortion Demand,” Social Science Journal 46 (2009): 632–43, https://www.infona.pl/resource/bwmeta1.element.elsevier-141efa1a-29c3-3dfa-83f9-73903a82b670/tab/summary.
17. Sarah Roberts, David Turok, Elise Belusa, Sarah Combellick, and Ushma Upadhyay, “Utah’s 72-Hour Waiting Period for Abortion: Experiences Among a Clinic-Based Sample of Women,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 48 no. 4 (2016): 179–87, doi: 10.1363/48e8216.
18. Erica Hellerstein and Tara Culp-Ressler, “Pricing American Women out of Abortion, One Restriction at a Time,” ThinkProgress, February 25, 2015, https://thinkprogress.org/pricing-american-women-out-of-abortion-one-restriction-at-a-time-c545c54f641f#.jzr6c8z64.
Chapter 5: America After Roe
1. Jeffrey Antevil, “Supreme Court Rules on Roe vs. Wade in 1973,” New York Daily News, January 21, 2015, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/supreme-court-rules-roe-v-wade-1973-article-1.2068726.
2. Constitutional Amendment Process, National Archives, August 15, 2016, https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution. For a time, the pro-life movement threw its support into campaigning for such a change in the form of the “Human Life Amendment.” Although the Republican Party’s platform continues to support the Human Life Amendment, the movement has had little traction in Congress. It has been decades since Congress even considered the issue. See the Human Life Action website for an account of activity on the Human Life Amendment, https://www.humanlifeaction.org/sites/default/files/HLAhghlts.pdf.