Read the week's best commentary from bloggers at Slate's "XX Factor," the American Civil Liberties Union's "Speak Freely" and more.
CRIMINALIZING PREGNANCY:
"Court vacates Purvi Patel's feticide conviction, landing a blow against 'personhood' laws," Christina Cauterucci, Slate's "XX Factor": "The Indiana Court of Appeals has reversed the February 2015 conviction of Purvi Patel, an Indiana woman sentenced to 30 years in prison with 10 years suspended for allegedly taking black-market abortion pills," Cauterucci writes. She explains that the lawsuit against Patel is "a major flashpoint in the abortion debate" because it "exposed the hypocrisy and lies of an anti-abortion movement that claims to want to punish abortion providers, not abortion seekers," and because it "provided an example of how fetal-rights laws, purportedly written to punish criminals who assault pregnant women, can easily be used to incarcerate women and intimidate them out of perfectly legal abortions." She notes that as of Friday, Patel's feticide conviction has been overturned and "her child neglect conviction reduced from a class A felony to a class D, a switch that will likely result in a new sentence of six months to two and a half years, all or much of which Patel will have already served." However, "as long as laws granting personhood rights to fetuses remain on the books, other women will most likely follow in [Patel's] wake," Cauterucci writes, noting that the "National Advocates for Pregnant Women has compiled hundreds of examples of other pregnant women who've been detained, arrested, and/or incarcerated for allegedly violating the rights of their own fetuses" (Cauterucci, "XX Factor," Slate, 7/22).
ABORTION RESTRICTIONS:
"A young woman seeking an abortion needs compassionate care, not unnecessary hurdles," Joshua Decker, American Civil Liberties Union's "Speak Freely": Last week, the Alaska Supreme Court struck down a law "requiring physicians to notify a parent, guardian, or custodian of a minor seeking an abortion," ruling that it "unjustifiably burdens only minors seeking an abortion -- violating the equal protection guarantees of the Alaska Constitution," Decker writes. He explains that the law would have forced a young woman who wished to seek a confidential abortion "to go through a complicated legal process to persuade a judge to allow her to have an abortion without parental involvement -- forcing abortions later in pregnancy, if the young woman could access the procedure at all." Decker explains, "Mandatory parental involvement laws like Alaska's are opposed by state and national medical experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics because they do not foster healthy communication, and can be very detrimental to the health and safety of young women." He writes, "In fact, the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Society for Adolescent Medicine have all advocated for the need to protect minor[s'] access to confidential reproductive health services." Noting that the government "cannot legislate healthy family communication," Decker concludes, "Instead, young women need safe, prompt, confidential health care, free of government-imposed restrictions" (Decker, "Speak Freely," American Civil Liberties Union, 7/22).
What others are saying about abortion restrictions:
~ "The U.S. has made it nearly impossible for low-income women to have an abortion," Alex Zielinski, Center for American Progress' "ThinkProgress."
HIV/AIDS:
"#AIDS2016 reveals a new way for women to protect themselves against HIV," Amie Newman, Our Bodies Ourselves' "Our Bodies, Our Blog": Newman writes about "a newly developed vaginal ring that releases an antiviral drug [and] greatly decreases the risk of contracting HIV," noting that the device could be particularly helpful for curbing the disease among "women who have little control to refuse sex or insist that their partner wear a condom." According to Newman, the researchers who announced the ring conducted a study of 2,629 HIV negative women in Sub-Saharan Africa and found that using the ring -- which is inserted by a woman each month and "releases a continuous flow of dapivirine, an anti-HIV drug -- reduces a woman's risk of contracting HIV by more than half." Newman cites Jared Baeten -- a leader of the study and a professor of global health, medicine and epidemiology at the University of Washington -- who explained that the researchers will now conduct a follow-up study to investigate "'why women do or do not like to use the dapivirine ring -- information that might help [researchers] plan the optimal approaches for its delivery outside of research settings, improve upon the product and clarify how different HIV prevention options fit into women's lives.'" Citing other HIV prevention methods, Newman concludes, "New HIV prevention tools must provide an opportunity for women to take control of their health and lives, and must also take into account the realities of women's lives" (Newman, "Our Bodies, Our Blog," Our Bodies Ourselves, 7/22).
