Michele Bratcher Goodwin,
"Reproductive Carrots and Sticks"
(page 7 of 9)
B: Dubious Distributional Effects
Across the social spectrum, FDLs have perverse distributional
effects. For this reason, scholars highlight equal protection problems
to defeat the enactment of such laws, but with varying success.
Generally, anti-FDL scholars and activist argue that such laws map
unevenly onto women, ignoring the conduct of husbands and boyfriends.
Such arguments are persuasive. But there are other distributional
impacts worth noting.
Imagine a pregnant woman's every sip of a caffeinated beverage, like
iced tea; gulp of carbonated soda; her bite into a chocolate chip cookie
or chocolate cake; or even a taste of a lemon-lime
soda[53] being a
crime against the state. Any reasonable lawmaker should want to flesh
this out further. Is that type of conduct the type of behavior the laws
are designed to deter or punish? Picture law students, women in the
military, women doctors, partners at law firms, commodity traders, and
those working in high-stress professions being treated as criminals—if
they miscarried—because the death of a fetus is treated as proof of
either intent to harm or evidence of negligent endangerment to the
fetus.
Here, then, for purposes of distributional equity, all pregnant women
who expose fetuses to harmful substances would be or should be
(according to a strict reading of what some legislators propose) subject
to prosecution. If the twin purposes of FDLs are to reduce preventable
risks to fetuses or even to lessen the incidence of low birthweight in
babies, then states will exceed the boundaries of their Constitutional
authority because the class will be overly broad and prosecution
excessive. If justly applied, the effect of fetal harm laws would be to
discriminate against between 85% and 90% of women (the
percentage of women who are fertile). The only women exempt from
prosecution for potentially harming a fetus would be infertile women,
who comprise only 15% of the population. They are exempt only because
they cannot have babies. The strict liability enforcement mechanism—at
least as applied to IC—is unyielding, giving no room to
consider personal or even medical externalities.
Medically and socially, the stress of maintaining a pregnancy that
avoids miscarriage or low birthweight delivery might be virtually
impossible or too costly. In fact, such stress could lead to medical
complications. We should seriously scrutinize efforts that would cast
our moral and legal commitments to equal opportunity back to an era
where race and poverty determined whether the state considered a woman
worthy to give birth.[54]
In the case of Carrie Buck, the United States
Supreme Court, led by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, found her unfit to
reproduce and held that a Virginia law[55]
that permitted the
compulsory sterilization of poor, illiterate people to be sufficiently
sturdy to pass Constitutional muster.[56]
The Court concluded that
"three generations of imbeciles are enough," thereby granting Virginia
the legal authority to order the sterilization of
Carrie[57] and
thousands of women thereafter. In Carrie's case, that she was the
victim of a rape perpetrated by her employer's nephew was irrelevant;
she was poor and her mother was alleged to have been an
alcoholic.[58]
Sadly, the U.S. eugenics policy became the strategy adopted by the Third
Reich in Nazi Germany.[59]
On inspection, how wide is the gap that distinguishes state
punishment of poor, drug-dependent women of color for becoming pregnant,
from eugenic era policies that institutionalized women like Carrie Buck
and released them only after their sterilizations? Both policies emerge
from a legislative interest in an idea of the "perfected fetus" and
"perfected child." And both policies find the answers to perfecting
society (through creating perfect babies and disincentivizing the poor
from reproducing) in the physical and emotional punishment of women.
My argument here is not that women are victims of their environments;
rather, it is an acknowledgement that neither men nor women maintain
absolute control over their environments. (Of course, historically women
have maintained less control than men.) Here, then, a woman could be
prosecuted for a miscarriage or stillbirth, but the effect (stillbirth)
could be linked to any number of causes, including second-hand
smoke,[60]
domestic violence,[61]
living in or near a toxic
environment,[62]
or the causes can be compounded.[63] Explained
differently, the criminal penalties associated with pregnancy would be
enough to incentivize avoiding pregnancy altogether. Indeed, it is very
difficult to quarantine one's environment or the circumstances in which
harms arise during a typical pregnancy. If the risk of pregnancy means
incarceration, then one likely effect would be to discourage pregnancy
and promote abortions, both of which are unintended and unanticipated
consequences.
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