Op-Ed: Ala. Inmate Was Denied Her Rights While Seeking Abortion Care
Op-Ed: Ala. Inmate Was Denied Her Rights While Seeking Abortion Care
According to Watson, the inmate, called Jane Doe, "lacked the freedom to obtain the abortion she was legally entitled to because the Lauderdale County Sheriff's Office refused to transport her to a health clinic." As a result, Watson writes that ACLU of Alabama "brought suit in federal court to ensure that Jane Doe would be able to exercise her constitutional right to an abortion."
However, "
t)he case took a sideways turn" when " t)he state sought to terminate Jane Doe's parental rights while she was pregnant, and it asked to have a lawyer appointed to represent the interests of Jane Doe's fetus," Watson writes. She notes, "Indeed, the Lauderdale County District Attorney seized upon the opportunity to make the most private of matters spotlighted in the public eye by announcing that he was charging her with chemical endangerment of her fetus and seeking the termination of parental rights."
"This move aimed to set a scary precedent and one that, we don't think, has ever played out in the history of our courts," Watson writes. She explains, "If our client lost parental rights to the fetus, the district attorney could have argued that her uterus was essentially a ward of the state, and that she would no longer be allowed to make decisions about her own body, including getting an abortion." Further, such a ruling also "might have allowed a judge to make other medical decisions on (the inmate's) behalf if she carried the pregnancy to term, including how often to take prenatal vitamins, whether to have an epidural, or whether to have a C-section."
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