Carol Mason and
Jeanne Flavin,
"Beyond Carrots and Sticks: Effective Public Education and Feminist Research in Conservative States"
(page 3 of 4)
Although there are incredibly strong advocates for reproductive
freedom in red states, often these are older white women whose
experiences of pre-Roe v. Wade days do not quite match those of
younger women. Younger Oklahoma women have never known a time when
pronatalist "family values" propaganda have not been paramount in white
communities or when a legacy of sterilization abuse has not ravaged
communities of color, especially in Native American communities.
National pro-choice programs that are known for reaching out to youth
have not prioritized red states; Oklahoma in particular is an especially
confusing case for some national organizations that cannot decide
whether it should be in their southern or midwestern districts. While
pondering that question, one group rejected an Oklahoma student who
applied to be part of a leadership training, derailing the young woman's
search for moral support and practical education.
As our own experiences attest, however, effective collaboration for
public education and grassroots organizing in red states is
possible.[9]
In November 2008, Oklahoma State University's Gender and
Women's Studies (GWS) department and New York City-based NAPW
(National Advocates for Pregnant Women) joined
forces to use local, mainstream media coverage to change the public
conversation about Theresa Hernandez and her case. Theresa Hernandez was
arrested in 2004 and charged with first-degree murder (a crime with a
potential penalty of 25 years to life) for having suffered a stillbirth.
The state claimed—without any scientific basis—that the stillbirth
was caused by methamphetamine use.
With the help of NAPW interns and Oklahoma City University-educated
attorney Kathleen Wallace, GWS and NAPW established relationships with
numerous health, treatment, and political activists in the state. They
secured funding to bring experts to Oklahoma who could reassure
journalists, policymakers, and medical professionals that the best way
to ensure healthy Oklahoma families and babies is to provide women with
proper medical care, prenatal counseling, and drug treatment if they
need it—not to throw women in jail under the old assumption (now
widely discredited by the medical profession) that testing positive for
drug use is tantamount to harming a child in
utero.[10] Treating
Oklahomans' meth addiction—the state's rate of admission for meth
addiction treatment jumped from 15.5 per 100,000 in 1992 to 118.8 in 2002—as a
public health concern rather than an individual moral choice is
essential.[11]
To educate the public, NAPW and GWS joined forces with
local sponsors (such as the state chapter of the American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecology, the state chapter of The National
Association of Social Workers, and YWCA Oklahoma City) to organize two
public education forums in Oklahoma City featuring Oklahoma physicians
as well as nationally recognized experts in the field.
The first forum, which took place in November 2007 at the
Presbyterian Health Foundation Conference Center, and the second,
occurring a year later at Integris Baptist Medical Center, helped shape
and shift public opinion on the issue. The efforts changed the
conversation from one about murderous and indifferent moms to one about
the role that the criminal justice system can play in creating greater
access to appropriate health care for pregnant women. Adamantly
"pro-life" prosecutors and judges began to see that protecting "the
unborn" means first protecting women from medically inaccurate
presumptions about pregnancy and drug use, such as the 1980s
media-induced crack baby myth that Goodwin discusses, and from those who
erroneously think they are acting in the best interest of children when
they break up families by incarcerating women and denying them effective
rehabilitation and treatment. This public education was instrumental in
helping Ms. Hernandez avoid a life sentence, negotiate a plea, and
secure her release only one year after sentencing. These combined
efforts also put a stop to new arrests on similar grounds and supported
local leaders who are now advocating for treatment rather than
punishment.
Getting Theresa Hernandez out of prison and free from a 25-year
sentence for suffering a stillbirth bolstered local reproductive justice
supporters incredibly. It demonstrated that you can make a
difference "even" in red states like Oklahoma.
What happened in Oklahoma is not a fluke. When the arrests,
detentions, and prosecutions of women have been challenged, they are
nearly always found—eventually—to be without legal basis or to be
unconstitutional. All but one of the country's appellate courts have
dismissed charges or overturned convictions of women who used drugs or
experienced an addiction and sought to continue their pregnancies to
term.[12]
When these prosecutions are challenged, courts have
routinely ruled that a plain reading of the applicable criminal statute,
and the absence of legislative intent to address the issue of drug-using
pregnant women through the criminal justice system, require that the
charges be dropped. Many of these courts have recognized that applying
existing criminal laws (such as those prohibiting child abuse, drug
delivery, and homicide) to pregnant women in relationship to the fetuses
they carry raises significant constitutional issues including due
process principles of notice, vagueness, and over-breadth, as well as
privacy and sex discrimination. Numerous courts have also acknowledged
the extraordinary consensus among medical groups condemning these
prosecutions as counterproductive and dangerous. In Florida, the state
supreme court overturned Jennifer Johnson's conviction for drug
delivery, declaring: "The Court declines the State's invitation to walk
down a path that the law, public policy, reason and common sense forbid
it to tread."[13]
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