An Alabama woman was imprisoned for ‘endangering’ her fetus. She gave birth in a jail shower
Exclusive: Ashley Caswell, one of a growing number of jailed pregnant women in Etowah county, is suing officials after she was denied care
15 years in prison for "endangering a fetus"? Then giving birth only for that child to not have a mommy during childhood, adolescence, and teenage years?
And this is considered good policy by those who create these laws?
wtf
The cruelty is the point. The well-being of the fetus is the excuse.
Excuse, more like sales pitch. You get together a bunch of old men who want to control women they will come up with the idea of being cruel to them when they disobey. Sounds pretty fucked up, how would you get people to agree? Don't worry about that, they will sell the idea abortion is murder. You wouldn't feel sorry for a murderer would you?
conservatives dont create logical policies. there is absolutely nothing logical about their 'platform'... except maybe 'brainwash masses to accumulate wealth'
The conservatives' platform is entirely logical:
(Forced-birth polices not only take step #3 literally, but also enhance step #1 by burdening young people with kids they aren't ready for.)
Its not about creating healthy environments or being concerned about the sanctity of life.
its about punishing the "other" for reproducing and dictating everything a woman can do.
These are people who believe in generational punishment. You should be punished for what your parents did.
Remember, we're all paying for what Adam and Eve did.
It's about control over women, none of the pedo conservatives care about the well being of kids at all.
I think it was for previous charges after she violated probation. But yeah, if we're going to talk about endangering a fetus, then everyone who had a hand in her jail conditions and who ignored her when she went in to labor should also be in prison because every one of them is guilty of endangerment.
No she was one of several women imprisoned under a new Alabama statute for "chemical endangerment of a fetus." You know, a "crime" that already can't be committed again by the time the imprisoned reach trial for it because of the way our "justice" system works.
Those women aren't allowed to endanger a fetus, but the all-knowing authorities are, apparently. (Yes, let's forcibly cold-turkey detox a pregnant person who was using. Great idea.)
It's never ever about protecting children.
And this is considered good policy by those who create these laws?
It's only good for the private prison industry that funds their campaigns, and bad for pretty much everyone else.
Alabama is a conservative confederate state. This is their preferred political outcome, yes, exactly.
Did you read the article?
accusations that she’d tested positive for methamphetamine while pregnant
Pretty sure a child being raised in foster care is safer than one dying in the womb from narcotics poisoning.
Who conducted the tests? What is the false positive rate? Was retesting done to ensure accuracy? Does CPS get to choose the testing labs, maybe the ones that get the results that they want? Did the sample have identification on it that a manager at the testing center could trace to the person?
I will start believing the criminal justice system the day I don't read weekly stories of missing body cam footage.
Jesus, what a nightmare story. That entire article is filled with horror. She must have felt so terrified and alone.
"After Caswell delivered her baby alone and lost consciousness, staff still refused to render aid and instead took photos of her baby without her consent, her lawyers allege. When she returned to the jail from the hospital, staff denied her access to her prescribed breast pump and ibuprofen."
Wtf is wrong with people? It's so fucking petty and mean. I'm gonna assume that none of the staff will actually face any consequences..?
Do they ever?
But over the next seven months of incarceration for “chemical endangerment” in the Etowah county detention center (ECDC), Caswell was denied regular access to prenatal visits, even as officials were aware her pregnancy was high-risk due to her hypertension and abnormal pap smears, according to a lawsuit filed on Friday against the county and the sheriff’s department. She was also denied her prescribed psychiatric medication and slept on a thin mat on the concrete floor of the detention center for her entire pregnancy.
It’s never been about protecting the fetus, it’s always been about punishing the woman for being a “slut”
Conservatism is a plague of oppression, misery and death. It always has been.
If a conservative can find a way to cause harm, they must do it. That is simply who they are at their core.
Don't need to do any better when I can just keep everybody else down
They have no plan for building or creation. Nothing about taking care of citizens. It’s misery and lashing out at the other and these motherfuckers build a whole personality around simply objecting to progress. They are a cancer and we need to cut it out before the whole world is metastasized out of existence
This case shows they’re doing precisely the opposite,” said Roth, who said the abuses Caswell endured were tantamount to “torture”.
No, it was full-blown torture. There's no room for interpretation here.
Women across the country have increasingly been jailed for pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriages and stillbirths.
Geez. I don't even know what to say. Miscarriages are way more common than people realize. In fact, it's possible that miscarriages out number full-term pregnancies. There are so many NORMAL biological factors that could trigger a miscarriage.
It's an incredibly complex and nuanced field of biology, and this simplistic mindset of "miscarriage means bad woman" is both disturbing and alarming.
I've read estimates that miscarriages make up as much as 75% of all pregnancies, but many are early so women just think their period was late.
We had three before we brought my son to term.
Sorry to hear that. We were in a similar situation. It's rough. My wife still breaks down emotionally on the projected delivery date of the first one we lost. All the what could have beens. 😭
I do think about it every so often, the only reason I don't get as emotional is because I have terrible memory for remembering specific dates. Took me almost 10 years to get my wife's birthday right. Still get it wrong sometimes.
In their minds, women have one job. And if the baby dies, then the girl obviously did a bad job.
I've never heard of it, but now I'm disturbed and alarmed about the people who hold that opinion.
Yeah, but god and Jesus and stuff, let’s punish women because we believe in Bronze Age myths.
Actually, even in Bronze Age myths, life begins when the baby takes its first breath. If anyone wants, you can listen to an in-depth (and often very funny) discussion on Data Over Dogma's "Abortion and the Bible" episode here.
what a "pro-life" move right? letting a mother and a newborn baby almost fucking die in prison
Yeah, at this point, they're just being terrible humans.
But excellent capitalists!
U.S.A. The country where sociopathy is celebrated as a virtue by about half the population.
If you had any doubts, the half is of course mainly Republicans.
More than half.
Unbounded Greed is sociopathy (quite literally doing what's best for oneself without any consideration for others) and even a Deadly Sin according to the Old Testament and the normalization of sociopathy is a countrywide phenomenon (worldwide even).
What we see here goes beyond the 'mere' "have no consideration for the suffering of others when acting in self interest" into an actual "make others suffer to serve some petty personal psychological need" - it goes beyond tyhe not caring about the suffering others when acting for personal upside maximization of sociopathy and into the actual vilany of harming others for personal enjoyment.
I like to believe that it's not close, and that most of the republican voters have other strong opinions that align with the party. And thus the pro-quantity approach to birth rights is just something that follows the party even though they don't agree with it.
I like to believe that.
In reality, I haven't really spoken with or heard about any republicans who haven't shaped their opinion in order to align with the party they are voting for.
I think women should maybe leave these places if they can. I wouldn’t even let a man think about having kids with me if I were a woman in any of those shit states.
...maybe leave these places if they can.
These laws are targeted towards poor women who can't fight back. This one is making the news because she's suing. I guarantee that if an attorney hasn't taken up the fight, you'd never hear about it.
those people are so incredibly brainwashed by conservatives, they will happily vote to their own detriment. but yay. fox news. free market. yay.
We could move if we wanted to. We aren't, at least right now, because we'd leave behind our entire social network. Even if we moved where we know people, they wouldn't help as much with our two young children. I know and understand and accept that. They don't have to help with our kids, but we'd lose the people who can. We'd lose our kids friends and the network we are building in the neighborhood, which of course can be rebuilt, but that's also a consideration. I'd probably only see my sister once a year if that because she can't leave the state due to a custody agreement. Funds would also be an issue.
I also worry about too many democratic people leaving and making the state more red as a result and leaving behind those who can't move, like my sister and her kids, who will suffer as a result of increasingly authoritarian laws. Some regressive politicians have outright said that it's their goal to make it miserable for democratic and liberal people to force them to move, make the state redder, and thereby gain even more power.
Most Americans can't afford a $500 emergency. Transplanting to a new state is off the table for a lot of people, especially women. If you have enough money to move, you probably also have enough money to take a weekend trip to get an abortion in a neighboring state.
Unless these things in the US seriously changes, I will never step foot there. I used to want to see all of the beautiful landscapes, animals, and buildings. I really did. Now, not so much.
If I have a medical emergency, I don't want to be somewhere where they'll delay necessary life saving treatment to first check if there might be a fetus.
Nope. Tbh, that also kind of sounds very similar to the things that they get angry at other countries for doing to women.
Another proud moment for Christianity
These people don't have the right to call themselves Christian. They just use that word to back up their actions with unchallengeable authority.
"Do unto others", and all that.
If you are a woman, voting republican, you should be fucking ashamed of yourself. This is what this party thinks of you and your kind.
"your kind"
they just think she deserves it for using meth
Agreed, but then again, let's say you don't like democrats either, for whatever reason. What choices do you have? Any other party has zero chances. It's time the US changes its voting laws to allow more than 2 parties to meaningfully exist, so people don't have to always choose the lesser of the two evils.
So they're losing maternity wards and jailing pregnant people. What a shithole.
Addicted to meth? That's jail time. Wait, you're a mother and you're pregnant? That's super jail time, 15 years for you. Have to fuck over your kids' lives as much as possible. You also don't get medical care and you have to give birth in a fungus-infested jail shower. Definitely ethical treatment under law here!
Caswell, who has faced several chemical endangerment charges over the years, is now in state prison, serving a 15-year sentence.
Not to take away from your comment but this woman clearly has major mental issues too. Why is she keep getting pregnant?
Lack of healthcare
Because "sterilization in lieu of prison" is too "eugenics" to be allowed as an option from the justice system.
She needed someone to explain to her that semi-permanent birth control measures demonstrate "rehabilitation" and "low risk of recidivism" after (or preferably, before) her first charge.
How anyone could vote for any republican is beyond reason. On top of being worthless traitor filth, they actively oppress women and endanger our future generations. Simply unfathomable.
Must own the libs!
A sizable number of them are simply glad about articles like this. It's not about protecting children or anything. It's about punishing women. I think a lot of GOP supporters don't even explicitly think "I want to punish women", but they implicitly enjoy when it happens. It's more about imposing their religious beliefs than about anyone's life or the likes.
And another sizable chunk are just apathetic. They'll be willing to ignore stuff like this because it's worth it in their mind to hurt LGBT people or whichever other GOP policy drives them. They'll tell themselves this is just a tragic accident in their quest for the greater good, never viewing this as an entirely foreseeable consequence or even the outright goal.
It's never been about the children. It has always been about controlling and dehumanizing women as this story so clearly demonstrates.
Yep, I thought everybody knew that already. They only care about the children as long as they're inside the woman, the second she pushes that baby out they don't have a care in the world anymore.
On the other hand, I DO believe some sort of intervention is needed when a drug addict gets pregnant, but I'm talking a locked rehab and not prison.
Jesus masturbates to this
Current republicans, probably
What about the risk for the mother? Holy shit, she didn't even have access to a basic maternity ward. America is fucked.
The mother? Conservatives view women as objects to be controlled and used. To them, she got put in her place. They view it as a good thing.
Can the baby sue for false imprisonment?
The baby can sue the state and the mother. It was trapped by the mother first.
Unlawful detention.
And that's why we don't punish that shit with jail time.
Toss ALL jail employees of the past 7 months in jail for torture, and toss the jailers.for that birth night in jaolmfor torture, and attempted murder of mother and child. I'm heavily against the death penalty but I'd make an exception for these religious fuckers.
If they believe they're right about it all, they also believe they'll live eternally in happiness when they die. They should welcome it.
Under His Eye
blessed be the fruit
What. The. Fuck. There are men who beat the absolute shit out of their girlfriends and spouses, for the 5th time, sometimes nearly kill them, and never see the inside of a jail cell or any charges at all. Or they get a few months and when they get the cops called on them for beating the shit out of another woman, they don't even get a parole or probation violation. Sometimes women get arrested, bloody with black eyes, while the person who did it walks away with barely a scratch and zero charges. I'm just speaking from personal here, but this happens with tons of other things. Sexual assault specifically. The supreme court just made it legal for people who have been charged with domestic violence to own/buy a fucking gun while out on bail.
I'm not defending using drugs while pregnant, and it's stupid I feel I even have to say that. But this sentence just shows, clear as day, the utter contempt the US has for women. And that the US prison system, and entire criminal justice system, constitutes actual torture - as they said in the article. I'm ashamed be an American, what an absolute Gilead shithole of a country.
The consequences of letting literal illiterates get into power.
Republicans, at least the ones calling the shots, don't give a shit about "the children" and never have. They just care about controlling women. It's sickening.
The elected Republicans want more control in general. Reproductive rights is just a means to force our population to stabilize but it is increasingly becoming more tyrannical which causes this scenario.
Well that tracks.
Were we supposed to be surprised? Most people called this.
...it exposes the consequences of the “fetal personhood movement”, which seeks to legally define fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses as people. The concept, enshrined in expanding anti-abortion laws, has led to increased surveillance and criminalization of pregnant people, with women punished for the outcomes of their pregnancies or other actions that police claim endangered their fetuses.
The way the detention staff acted in this is frankly disgusting. That being said, I don't think it is entirely fair to equate Alabama's frankly stupid abortion legislation with assigning a certain level of rights to a foetus. If a mother intends to carry to full term and is using drugs, I don't think it is fair to the foetus-soon-to-be-person to ignore this.
Who here would like to try and explain to a victim of foetal alcohol syndrome or prenatal opioid exposure that their suffering is morally acceptable because their mother had the right to choose?
It doesn't always need to be one extreme or another, there is a middle ground.
There's some legal murkiness I could see coming from that, but in principle it seems like something you would have to prosecute after the individual was born.
If a fetus isn't a person, then there's no victim. The potential of a victim isn't the same as a victim. The intention for there to be a victim doesn't even create a victim.
I think about the closest thing you could argue for would be that if a person knew they were pregnant, could have aborted but chose not to, and engaged in behavior that demonstrably caused harm once there was a live person, then maybe you could argue some type of negligence. But even that feels really close to a slippery slope to me, and makes me too uncomfortable.
If for no other reason than it could create a situation where someone is prosecuted for knowingly reproducing while having a measurable statistical chance of a heritable birth defect, or just being above the age where down syndrome becomes more likely.
If a fetus isn't a person, then there's no victim. The potential of a victim isn't the same as a victim. The intention for there to be a victim doesn't even create a victim.
Except this is precisely the opposite of the logic used if some third party causes the harm. If, say, a pregnant woman gets shot in a mugging gone wrong and her fetus dies as a consequence, were more than willing to count that as a homicide and for some reason this line of reasoning vanishes.
It's either a person or not, not whichever is more convenient to the mother in whatever situation occurs.
I disagree whole heartedly. Criminalizing things like using drugs during pregnancy leads to criminalizing miscarriages for natural reasons which has absolutely happened. There's not a ton of cases, but women have gone to jail for having a miscarriage after saying they wanted an abortion based on the idea that they must have killed their fetus.
I don't care about prosecuting or criminalising in this case. There is already precedent for rehabilitation both voluntary, and in the case where a person's safety is at risk, involuntary.
I don't see why this could not be expanded to include the safety of an unborn child.
Noting specifically that I am talking about drug abuse where a woman intends to carry to term, not about locking women up to force them to give birth. I hate that I even have to clarify, but if experience had taught me anything, people on social media get positively orgasmic when they find something they can willfully misinterpret.
Disgusting but not surprising
I agree. If your goal is to give birth, it feels like the fetus becomes a person. Otherwise, 20 to 24weeks, in my opinion, is the reasonable time a fetus could become a person as it is in that period that the conscious experience starts to appear.
The mother in this story was 2 months pregnant when she was arrested, so about eight weeks. I've searched for every other news story on this I could find and none of them say when she became aware she became pregnant and whether or not she used drugs after that, so it's quite likely she didn't have a goal of giving birth here.
There is a German proverb: Every people has the government it deserves.
Interesting proverb for Germans. I wonder how long it's been around
seems like a shitty quote. what made you think of it?
Whover you allow to rule you: You are getting exactly what you have earned yourself. In a Democracy this is even more evident than in a dictatorship.
So… why are the guards not being arrested for child endangerment? Why is this a lawsuit and not a criminal matter?
Least brain rotted US government:
What?
Fortress has arrived
For all those fine upstanding people who soabox about fetal life, this is the world you created for these women and their childfen.
Alabama is a shithole
So basically we're throwing women in a pit and throwing stones at them for 'giving men the urge'.
Where was this free world I heard so much about?
To lock her the drug addict to protect fetus is good. To deny mto-be-mother proper conditions and medical care equals to endangering the fetus thus responsible people should be judged as such as well.
I don't think this to be religious question but rather legal question. Mother should sue the hell out of that prison and live from the half of the money ever after. But without drugs. Other half of the money should belong to the kid and used for kid's education etc.
To lock her the drug addict to protect fetus is good
do you really think putting her in jail is going to prevent her from using?
Do you REALLY think that?
do you really think that's a GOOD way, better than other options, to keep her sober?
Yeah i do.
From where i come, if you leave drug addict on streets, they will continue their path of self-destruction regardless of their or others' well-being.
So most effective solution is to isolate the drug addict from the source of addiction.
That your prisons sucks at upholding basic human rights, it's not my fault. It's yours for not giving a damn about it.
There are places where prisoners get chance to work, own pet, study to become doctors, programmers and most importantly they get good healthcare as not everywhere around the globe people don't give a damn about people behind bars.
Also Locking her up doesn't inevitable mean in the prison. Again difference of my background i guess. There are specialized institutions that hold drug addicts and keeps them sober long enough to give them chance to get out of the habit. I know people who went through that. I've visited such a place. It might be a farm with animals or house kinda reminding of those for abused women (house with multiple affected who share their experiences and live together for limited time.
Your blinding rage just prevents you to see what's really wrong and what should be fixed.
No, it's not good at all. This leads to and has led to women being jailed for natural miscarriages or charged with endangering a fetus for taking prescribed medication or for eating everyday things like sushi and lunch meat. You may think I'm making a slippery slope argument. I'm not. This things have really happened. Women were charged with manslaughter for expressing a possibility of having an abortion, keeping the pregnancy, falling down the stairs, and having a miscarriage. The moment you criminalize a woman's actions during pregnancy that relate to a fetus is the moment any action that could have any possible negative outcome is suspect. Suddenly women who have had miscarriages are all crime scenes unless proven otherwise. It's not a slippery slope. Women have and are being jailed for having miscarriages.
Please read this my respond to some one else basically saying the same as you, It's also in this tread.
That's too logical. Even more logical would be putting money toward social reform programs, instead of blanketing everything under a prison system that does nothing to rehabilitate, and exists solely to punish
Surprised they didn't throw more charges for "endangering her newborn" by giving birth in a jail shower.
Edit: I guess the prison system doesn't exist "solely" to punish. It also exists to suppress any challenge to the status quo, extort money from vulnerable populations, and probably a whole list of other neat little "features"
Please read this> my respond to some one else, It's also in this tread.
I support some common sense restrictions on abortion... I don't think anyone should be able to just up and demand the death of what is arguably a human life without a good reason.
This is not that, hell it couldn't be anymore obvious that the GOP doesn't care about life or the safety of the child, they just want as many rules on the books as possible to let them punish "Enemies of the party"
See, what you call "common sense" restrictions is just you sticking your nose in a woman's reproductive business.
Mind your own business. Leave a woman's health care up to a woman and her doctor. That's common sense.
I don't care what spin you put on it pal. No one should be allowed to kill a human being on a whim.
Now if there's something medically wrong with the fetus or the pregnancy is too taxing to be safely brought to term, that's different.
But the fact that you're being upvoted and I'm being downvoted shows that the wackos from Reddit have finally discovered Lemmy
Welcome to the consequences of your actions.
Actually I vote Democrat exclusively because I'm aware that the GOP are domestic terrorists acting on behalf of Russian Homophobes, nice try.
See while I think just letting ANYONE get an abortion is morally wrong and that the procedure should only be done in extreme cases, like rape, ectopic pregnancy, incest, major deformity, and the like, etc....
I also realize Republicans are the opposite extreme in that they want NO ABORTIONS AT ALL and aren't big on the concept of gender equality.
So I vote Democrat despite the Abortion issue, as I realize neither party has a satisfactory answer to it, but the Democrat Answer causes less problems.
It's called "Don't let Perfect be the enemy of Good"
So you're a forced birther. Got it.
No I just am one of the people who don't think it's Misogynistic to have a problem with literal murder.
I've said it before and I will say it again. This is democracy in action. Her community and loved ones want their society to be that way. If that's what they want, well, it sure doesn't affect me.
You have to be brain dead to think there's democracy in the US. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, two senators per state, the electoral college... Wake up.
I used to live in Alabama. This is a version of what they want. But I also agree with the chump who said "it doesn't affect me". Because that's what allowed all the atrocities of history to happen. Sometimes you have to stop evil people from being evil.
I hear you. But looking around, the ratio of fools to wise people in government looks proportional to the population at large. Have you considered that direct democracy would just be the 4chan version of government?
And I'm only half kidding. Egalitarian political movements, even before Marx, have found "the people" to be much less noble and wise than anticipated. I believe this is a partial explanation for the revolution to authoritarian pipeline problem. Be it Bolivar, Lenin, or Castro, what do you do if the people vote for the old system, even when it's contrary to their interests? Well, the historical answer seems to be: force them removed to be free.
Keep saying it everywhere, sooner or later someone with a less closed mind than yours and with a bad day will hear it and will have no choice but to beat the shit out of you.
This statement doesn't make sense to me. Can you explain?
Alabamans want their society to be this fucked up. I'm happy they are allowed to do this to themselves. "never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake" and what not.