Georgia is releasing 23-year-old Kenlissia Jones from the Doughterty
County Jail, where the black mother to a toddler has been illegally
detained, but they are threatening her with more charges…
Apparently trying to save face after realizing that
they had no legal leg to stand on, Georgia is releasing 23-year-old
Kenlissia Jones from the Doughterty County Jail, where the black mother
to a toddler has been illegally detained for allegedly taking a drug to end her pregnancy. She was facing a possible charge of “malice murder.”
But her nightmare is far from over.
This is the end result of many Republican allegedly
“pro-life” laws around the country, and naturally, it ended up violating
all kinds of personal liberties and Constitutionally-protected rights,
as well as interfering in medical care and making Jones’ toddler suffer.
It also sends a message that women can be arrested for being pregnant,
which is not exactly an incentive.
National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) said in
a statement that it “applauds Dougherty County Prosecutor Gregory W.
Edwards’ conclusion that there is no legal authority for charging a
pregnant woman with the crime of murder for having terminated her own
pregnancy. As the prosecutor explained in this detailed legal analysis
released today, no Georgia law permits prosecution of women for murder
or related criminal charges based on pregnancy or the outcome of their
pregnancies.”
However, as any reasonable person would think, NAPW
notes that she never should have been arrested in the first place and as
a result of the state’s actions, “Ms. Jones had to endure the trauma of
arrest, imprisonment, and the profound violation of her rights to
physical liberty as well as medical and personal privacy.” They
continued, “It is especially troubling to see a young black mother of a
toddler charged with a crime that carries the death penalty.”
Ms. Jones was arrested after seeking care at a
hospital, where a social worker turned her in to police for having
allegedly tried to give herself an abortion. This is how they do it in
Georgia, and not just Georgia, as we pointed out in the first article
about Jones’ arrest and illegal detainment,
“Anne Bynum in Arkansas was arrested for “concealing a birth”, and
“abuse of a corpse” after she took medication to terminate her pregnancy
at home. Purvi Patel of Indiana was convicted and is serving 20 years
in prison for what Indiana called feticide.”
Not only was she falsely imprisoned, held without
bond and her constitutionally-protected rights grossly infringed upon by
the eager stupidity of Georgia law enforcement’s agenda-laden inability
to understand basic law (a pro-life group was telling them the law did
not allow them to do this), but her medical and personal privacy was
obscenely violated without her consent.
But the prosecutors aren’t going down so easy. Being
forced to release the young mother, they’ve rooted around for anything
they can charge her with in what looks to be a daft and transparent
effort to avoid being sued for their epic mishandling and personal
violations of the young mother, and have landed upon a misdemeanor
charge of “possession of a dangerous drug,” among other unnamed
possibilities.
Oh, what a thug, you’re thinking. Hardcore drugs?
Sure she deserves it. But wait. The drug Georgia prosecutors are
charging her as having allegedly possessed is misoprostol, which is not a
dangerous drug, according to people who actually know things. That
would be the World Health Organization and medical researchers.
Small government Georgia is going to prosecute the
single mother of a toddler whom they falsely imprisoned because she
allegedly took a drug that is used “safely around the world” for many
reasons (obstetric and gynecological — areas about which the Georgia law
enforcement must inaccurately fancy themselves as expert as some
Republicans in Congress).
NAPW pointed out that the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists oppose threatening women with arrest in relationship to their pregnancies “because it deters women from seeking help and, as a result, undermines maternal, fetal, and child health.”
So the next time a woman needs medical care during
her pregnancy, she will probably avoid it if there is any way she could
be charged with malice murder, which is exactly the opposite of
pro-life.
“Pro-life” apparently excludes women, as we see from Governor Scott Walker’s (R-WI) latest bill, Republicans aren’t making exceptions in their policing of your medical decisions even for the life of the mother or incest.
They are all about entitling the father to sue the doctor for
’emotional and psychological distress’ no matter what his relationship
with the woman, which Walker’s law allows.
NAPW is calling for the prosecutor to drop all
charges, “Because public health, fairness to pregnant women, and
fundamental principles of human rights and dignity prohibit the use of
state power to arrest and punish women for being pregnant and for the
outcomes of their pregnancies, NAPW calls on Mr. Edwards to drop all
charges against Ms. Jones.”
Ms.
Jones needs a good lawyer and she needs to sue the state, the police
officer who arrested her, the prosecutor’s office, and the entity where
the social worker is employed. There’s a bounty of things to sue for,
and it needs to happen or else these folks are just going to continue
making up laws to suit their religious ideology.
No comments:
Post a Comment