Padaviya

At first glance, Provisional Measure 557 (PM 557) is not a bad law. It purports to address Brazil’s high maternal mortality ratio by ensuring better access to quality maternal health care, notably for pregnant women at a high risk for health complications. The problem is that it won’t reduce maternal mortality. Notwithstanding the fact that many of its provisions are legally and constitutionally questionable, its requirements are not based on sound public health policy.

So what is going on? Brazil, the most populous Catholic country in Latin America, finds its politics intrinsically tied to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Dilma, who won a last-minute reprieve from the church’s negative onslaught in the 2010 presidential elections once she disavowed any suggested support for abortion, is to a certain extent beholden to that base. Indeed, Dilma’s cabinet includes an unofficial church representative who was responsible for brokering an agreement between the Vatican and Brazil during President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration. For years Catholic and evangelical parliamentarians have been trying unsuccessfully to establish a registry for pregnant women, with Dilma’s support they’ve finally succeeded.

Passing such a controversial law during the height of the holiday season without congressional review or approval suggests some backroom negotiations were at play. A provisionary measure is a legislative tool available to Brazilian presidents to pass a law without congressional authorization and is intended for urgent matters. Congress can only debate and approve the law once it has been enacted. While maternal mortality is absolutely a pressing issue, PM 557 is a law that requires long-term implementation to address an endemic issue; therefore, it clearly does not fall into that category.

The biggest problem with maternal mortality in Brazil is not access to health care services, which PM 557 claims it will address, but rather the quality of public health services. The majority of preventable maternal deaths actually take place in public hospitals. PM 557 does not guarantee, for example, access to health exams, timely diagnosis, providers trained in obstetric emergency care, or immediate transfers to better facilities. It doesn’t even ensure a pregnant woman will find a vacant bed when she is ready to give birth.

What PM 557 does do is raise questions about preserving a woman’s human rights: her right to privacy, which would be violated by the compulsory government registration to control and monitor her reproductive life; her right to autonomy and dignity, which would be violated by denying her the freedom of choice; and her right to liberty, which would be completely void as she’d be legally obligated to have all the children she conceives (protecting the rights of the “unborn,” which is flagrantly unconstitutional) and will be monitored by the state for this purpose.

It’s unlikely that Congress will review the new law until it next meets in March. In the meantime, it’s unclear whether women will be lining up to register their pregnancies and if they do what will be the consequence of a pregnancy that ends in miscarriage or an abortion—the latter of which, under Brazilian law, is criminalized except for cases of rape or risk to the life of the pregnant woman. One thing we can be certain of is that maternal mortality rates will not be dropping any time soon, but the prosecution of women for harming a fetus or for getting an abortion could be on the rise.  

By Gillian Kane

“Have you seen the pregnant mom? The young pregnant woman, probably in her 20′s, had a darker complexion with dyed red hair and tattoos on her neck and right shoulder. She also had some facial piercings. The woman looked obviously pregnant….please let us know immediately if you have seen a woman with this description.”

After reading this plea you may grow worried – what could have happened to this woman?  Certainly this must be a call for help from the pregnant woman’s family, desperate to locate her.  You can’t be blamed for thinking that – but you would be dead wrong.

This is an All Points Bulletin – an APB! – issued by radical Wisconsin anti-choice group Vigil for Life to track down a pregnant woman seeking services at Planned Parenthood.  Yes, you read that correctly. 

The young woman came to Madison but by the time she arrived Planned Parenthood was closed.  Unfortunately, Vigil for Life is setting up a crisis pregnancy center right across the street from the Planned Parenthood Clinic and was there to feed this young woman anti-choice propaganda.  However, the young woman slipped away before the Vigil For Life volunteers got her name. 

If you are unfamiliar with Vigil for Life, these are the hardcore protesters outside Planned Parenthood clinics with their “sidewalk counselors” accosting women as they enter.  Remember Ralph Lang, the man arrested in Madison who was planning an attack on Planned Parenthood to, “lay out abortionists because they are killing babies?”  Mr. Lang is associated with Vigil for Life and has attended several of its “vigils.”

Vigil for Life happily trumpets its new crisis pregnancy center on their blog: 

Right across the street from Planned Parenthood in Madison, good things are happening! The City of Madison has approved building permits to bring the Women’s Care Center, a successful crisis pregnancy center model, to Madison!

Pulled right from the anti-choice play book – set up shop next to an actual medical clinic to make yourself appear like an actual medical clinic and you get to harass women going into Planned Parenthood to boot.

As I mentioned above, the APB came after three volunteers – or as they say “prayer warriors” - failed to get her name.  The Vigil for Life email blast details the encounter:

The women then crossed to the other side of the street to the future Women’s Care Center to read the sign by the gate.

One of the prayer warriors asked, “Do you ladies need help with anything?” One of them, a young woman said, “Yes, I’m looking for information about an abortion. The prayer warriors started to talk to the woman and her sister about abortion. By looking at her, it was obvious that the young woman was very pregnant and quite sad. The prayer warriors referred her to resources to help. When they mentioned the physical and psychological negative effects of abortion, the sister of this young woman responded, “Yeah, but isn’t the psychological trauma of having a baby and giving it away worse?”

One of the prayer warriors was able to speak to the women on the benefits of adoption versus the consequences of abortion. She shared that, even if you give your baby up for adoption, you can know that you gave some person out there the gift of life. At that point, the pregnant woman started to cry and walk away. As the pregnant woman walked back to the car she turned around and shouted, “I know. I have two children of my own already!”  The interaction seemed rushed, and the prayer warriors weren’t able to get the names of the women before they left.

And then, of course the APB:

Have you seen the pregnant mom? The young pregnant woman, probably in her 20′s, had a darker complexion with dyed red hair and tattoos on her neck and right shoulder. She also had some facial piercings. The woman looked obviously pregnant. We pray that she will never decide to come back to Planned Parenthood. Please let us know immediately if you have seen a woman with this description.

So now anti-choice radicals will be tracking down women by circulating physical descriptions of them?  How many more tools will they be able to use to terrorize women?  At what point does the protection of Vigil for Life’s rights begin to destroy the rights of others?  And when is someone going to step up and legislate against this kind of behavior on the part of anti-abortion zealots?  This move by Vigil for Life is beyond the pale and must not be allowed to pass without notice. 

I spoke with Lisa Subeck, Executive Director of NARAL Pro Choice Wisconsin, about this. (We were speaking about another subject but this topic came up. she is the one who shared the email blast with me.) She is considering contacting the Madison police department about the email, rightfully concerned about the legality of it.  I say good on Lisa – this kind of behavior cannot be tolerated.  Will keep you posted.

At Ms., Amy Williams posted about the pre-conception care movement.  Pre-conception care is health care aimed at making the bodies of fertile women most conducive to a healthy pregnancy.  The movement asserts that women of childbearing age should be receiving care with pregnancy in mind, whether or not the woman intends to get pregnant.  The Preconception Care webpage at Healthy Beginnings, for example, reads as follows:

In a presentation on the topic, Rebecca Kukla,  Professor of Philosophy and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of South Florida, explains that preconception care is an “official priority” for the Center for Disease Control and the US Office of Minority Health.   So what’s to be concerned about here?

First, the approach reduces women to their potential to make babies. Concern for women’s health is motivated not by concern for the woman herself, but her ”merely imaginary future children.”   What is the value of old women, transgender women, involuntarily infertile women, and women who have been voluntarily sterilized?  What principles guide their health?

Second, treating women as potential fetus carriers sometimes interferes with the best practices for treating women. Kukla explains that doctors driven by this approach may be inclined to choose drugs that are known to improve fertility and enhance pregnancy outcomes, instead of the most effective drugs for whatever condition is at hand.  As an extreme example, consider a woman diagnosed with cancer for whom a hysterectomy is the most aggressive treatment?  Whose interests should the doctor consider?  Hers?  Those of her “merely imaginary future children”?

Third, treating women as potential fetus carriers encourages doctors and others to police women’s behaviors more stringently than men’s. Anything she does that doesn’t maximize her fertility and baby-making condition can be seen as a problem needing fixing.  Men’s life choices are simply not subjected to this sort of social scrutiny.  We already see this sort of intervention against women who are told to avoid alcohol even if they are unaware of being pregnant and have no intention of getting pregnant.

Fourth, Kukla points out that the approach skews women’s health towards those things that we think affect fetal outcomes. Should these conditions necessarily take priority over others?

Finally, this approach makes women, like myself, invisible. I am a fertile woman in my 30s who has chosen not to have children.  I truly hope that my health care is not being compromised by my doctor’s concern for the babies I am never going to have.  Nor do I think it’s cute that her concern for me is driven by my reproductive potential.

Most women who’ve been visibly pregnant know that lots of people you don’t know suddenly feel they have a say in your life. Perfect strangers—on the subway, in the elevator, on a street corner—ask when you are due, the sex of your baby, the number of children you currently have. People you don’t know touch your belly without permission, as though you were a ripe cantaloupe awaiting sale, and offer “helpful” and entirely unsolicited advice on what you should or should not eat or do. While such exchanges usually can be shrugged off as the well-intentioned intrusions of strangers, have enough of them and you begin to feel like the pregnant-version of Mrs. Potato Head under surveillance: a walking, bulbous shape with no brain, face, or identity beyond your belly and no identifiers except those projected onto you by other people.

Most of us also are well aware that on the other end of the spectrum, far right lawmakers across the country have become self-anointed pregnancy police, writing laws and policies restricting access to everything from comprehensive sex ed to birth control and abortion; making women pay for rape kits; deciding where and when mothers can breast feed; merrily slashing funds for the services that ensure poor women have access to primary preventive health care, such as breast exams, pap smears, and testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections; and contesting the health reform law that would help alleviate some gaps in access.  Taken together, these actions limit the rights and often threaten the health of women of reproductive age and sexually active women of all ages.  It is pretty much the stated intention of these folks to turn women into Mrs. Potatohead figures…giving us arms and legs and expressions only at a time and for a purpose that suits them best.

Now we have another form of “pregnancy control:” The citizen’s arrest.  The citizen’s arrest is the natural extension of our obsession with controlling women’s sexual and reproductive lives. It is the emboldenment of or “natural conclusion” drawn by people conditioned to see women as Mrs. Potatohead. It may not land you in jail, but it handcuffs you in various ways, circumscribing your actions, limiting the public space in which you can participate, sometimes affecting your livelihood. It takes away the right to move about in the world just like everyone else (read: men). And it goes beyond pregnancy to include breastfeeding, medical care, and any and all other actions the male half of the population takes for granted as their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In recent weeks, a series of seemingly unrelated actions taken by private citizens, business, and corporations has shown just how emboldened private actors have become in deputizing themselves in policing women.

First example: At a bar and restaurant outside of Chicago last week a bouncer took it upon himself to tell a pregnant woman she had to leave. 

Why?

“She might get hurt.” 

The woman, Michelle Lee, is a 29-year-old Chicago native now living in Denver.  She is eight months pregnant.  She came to town for a baby shower thrown for her by her friends, and then went out with them afterward to the Coach House, a bar and restaurant in suburban Roselle, Illinois, to drink some water and have a slice of pizza.

Not allowed. Since Ms. Lee is pregnant she apparently is subject to surveillance. Or at least so thought the bouncer, who approached her and told her she had to leave. 

“He said to me, ‘I have a personal question to ask you, are you pregnant?’ I said yes. Then he said, ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave,’” Lee told ABC News.

Lee told the Chicago Tribune she was only in the bar for 15 minutes before being asked to leave, and that the bouncer told her Coach House would be liable for her if she got hurt in the bar.

“That is not acceptable behavior,” Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women, told ABC News, in a statement I fear should have been so obvious to everyone we would not otherwise be writing about this. But, as she notes, “we live in a country where people feel increasingly empowered to make decisions for pregnant woman.”

Pause here for a second to consider this: “You might get hurt.” Why the pregnant woman? Aren’t the other women in the bar as vulnerable (or not) to getting hurt (by what…not clear)? Isn’t every man that walks into a bar at the same risk of “getting hurt (by whatever it was the bouncer feared)?”  Wasn’t the bar going to be liable for those same people in case the unknown catastrophe came to pass? It wasn’t the woman. It was the fetus she was carrying that was of value; it was her belly. And for some reason the bouncer felt he was justified in policing the vessel.

This is, of course, ripe for a lawsuit.

“There are certain things for which you are not able to discriminate against someone, and one is their gender,” Ed Yohnka, an American Civil Liberties Union spokesman, told the Tribune. “And only women can have babies. You can’t discriminate against a pregnant person.”

Okay, you say, but this is an isolated incident.

I wish it were.

Every day in the United States, citizens are deputizing themselves to police pregnant women. These people feel empowered to make what is in effect a citizen’s arrest of women who are or might be pregnant, or who are trying to avoid pregnancy, on the assumption they know what is best for these and all women.

Take for example the case of the Walgreen’s pharmacist in Nampa, Idaho who refused to fill a prescription for a drug to stop uterine bleeding unless the nurse practitioner revealed whether the patient had had an abortion.

According to Planned Parenthood, as quoted in Jezebel, here’s what happened:

Planned Parenthood officials said the complaint states that the pharmacist inquired if the patient needed the drug for post-abortion care. The nurse refused to answer the question based on confidentiality of health information.

According to Planned Parenthood, the pharmacist then stated that if the nurse practitioner did not disclose that information, she would not fill the prescription. The nurse alleged that the pharmacist hung up when asked for a referral to another pharmacy that would fill the prescription.

First of all, is it the job of pharmacists to diagnose and prescribe? Or is it their job to fill prescriptions for medical care deemed necessary by a medical practitioner licensed to write the prescriptions pharmacists are supposed to fill. What business is it of a pharmacist to actively invade a patient’s privacy by inquiring why she might need a drug prescribed by the medical professional who diagnosed a condition worthy of medication, and who took an oath to protect the health and life of the patient in front of them?

This also is not an isolated incident. In fact, pharmacists are one of the largest groups and in a class of their own among the new pregnancy police. Creeping conscience clauses in law and policy—to which, unfortunately, some progressive groups have capitulated a number of times lobbying for one law or another—have spread like their own cancer throughout our health care system and have empowered fundamentalist Evangelical and Catholic pharmacists to act as unaccountable judge and jury in deciding whether or not women can fill prescriptions for medications approved by the FDA and prescribed by their doctors.  These actions immediately curtail women’s ability to exercise their rights. They are put under “medical arrest,” stripped, variously, of their rights to prevent a pregnancy (when they are denied access to various forms of contraception, including emergency contraception), to terminate an unintended, unwanted or untenable pregnancy, or to protect their health in the case of a pregnancy gone wrong.  Similar types of policing of women’s bodies is increasingly done by Catholic medical hospitals which refuse not only to dispense contraception, or provide emergency contraception to rape victims, but also to provide an abortion even in the case where a pregnant woman would die by continuing the pregnancy. As we’ve recently seen, hospitals that transgress ideological rules and save a mother’s life are themselves policed by the Catholic Church hierarchy, and can be “excommunicated” for saving the lives of pregnant women in distress.

Recently, the pregnancy police have also begun to invade social networks. Faceless employees at Facebook, the world’s largest social networking site and a company notoriously bad for sharing otherwise private user data or limiting the use of the site with little accountability, have taken it upon themselves to police photos of pregnant and nursing women, deeming them to be “obscene.”

In December, for example, Facebook flagged photos posted by a birth and maternity photographer from Iowa as obscene, and disabled her page, adversely affecting her business. 

According to the Associated Press, Laura Eckert’s photography business, New Creation Photography & Design, specializes in pictures of pregnant women and the first moments of a baby’s life. She uses Facebook to communicate with clients and highlight her work and had posted pictures including shots of a friend and her newborn moments after birth that partially showed her friend’s breasts, but not her nipples. She said she was shocked when Facebook told her last month it had removed “inappropriate photos” from her page, saying she had carefully cropped pictures to comply with company policies.

According to AP, Eckert, 33, said when she tried to log on to find out which photos were targeted, she found her account was disabled. She said she sent 30 or more e-mails to Facebook to inquire and try to be reactivated and didn’t get a response until Thursday of that next week…. a day after KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids reported on her plight.

“It’s funny it happened after the media got involved. I sent many polite e-mails asking for information over the course of the last few weeks and got no response. None,” she said in an interview Thursday afternoon at her home in Shueyville, a small town between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.

Facebook then apologized in an email “for the inconvenience,” and restored her account. Facebook spokesman Simon Axten said the company reviews thousands of pieces of content every day and takes action to ensure Facebook “remains a safe and trusted environment for everyone.” Implying, of course, that pregnant and nursing women are somehow out of control, not to be trusted, lack judgment or are dangerous (I guess to the very children they are carrying or nursing in those photos)?

Supporters of Eckert who formed a group on Facebook to lobby for her reinstatement, charged the that the company was hypocritical for targeting photos they considered beautiful art while routinely allowing pictures of teenage girls dressed provocatively and others they consider obscene.”  In fact, Facebook is so “safe and trusted” you can easily find pages upon pages of Playboy photos there should you so desire. These have not been banned. Perhaps the employees at Facebook have not been able to find them. (For the record, I am not suggesting these or other photos be censored).

Facebook claimed the removal of Eckert’s photos was an example of an occasional mistake; Axten asserted that “[w]hen this happens, and it’s brought to our attention, we work quickly to resolve the issue.” (Sure, as long as a TV station gets involved.)

Having said that, then they turned right around and banned another page.

The Leaky B@@b Facebook page (set up to help convene and support nursing women) was taken down, put back up, taken down and then reinstated again during the first week of January.  A message posted there said:

This time cautious celebrations were expressed on the page along with fear that it would just go back down.  As I write this it has been up for 7 hours, just about as long as it was up yesterday.  Hopefully it will really stay this time.

But participants on the page had their accounts disabled.

Several “Leakies” as we affectionately call those on the Facebook page, had their accounts disabled after receiving warnings for supposed obscene photos.  Just like TLB, they received the non-specific form letter via email informing them that they were deleted for violating the TOS [Terms of Service]. These individuals along with numerous other group and business pages have had their accounts deactivated all because someone decided that their breastfeeding photo or information was vulgar.

Facebook’s actions have affected other businesses dealing with pregnancy and maternity products and prompted users of specific pages to self-censor otherwise normal postings of pregnancy and maternity discussions and products. 

Judy P. Masucci, Ph.D, president and owner of A Mother’s Boutique shares how Facebook deactivating her account last summer impacted her.  Now she tip-toes around her pages on Facebook afraid to say or post anything that may attract unwanted attention.  What is she doing that is so obscene?  Sharing information and photos that support breastfeeding and mothering.  No lewd photos, no hateful content and certainly nothing as revealing as what you can find on the Playboy Facebook page.  (I can’t bring myself to link to the Playboy page but if you’re really curious do a Facebook search, you’ll see what I mean.)

The perpetuation of the citizen’s arrest of pregnant, nursing, and “maybe-pregnant” women” is a silent cooptation of women’s choices, their health, sometimes their livelihoods, and sometimes their very lives by both groups and individuals who feel emboldened to act on their own to ensure women stay “in their place,” and to reinforce, however indirectly, the social norm that the value of a woman is in her womb. They are emboldened by a political environment in which fundamentalist and so-called “pro-life” lawmakers work assiduously to limit women’s rights and “progressive” leaders tell women to shut up when their rights are traded away in the interest of someone’s election aspirations “common ground.”

This year we face what will arguably be the greatest number of attempts in any given session at the state and federal level to pass laws restricting women’s rights to safe sex and choice in childbearing. It is a climate in which the problem of citizen’s arrests of women is likely to get worse before—and if—it gets better.

I’ve heard that people get weird around pregnant ladies, and I certainly know from blogging about feminist issues that American society tends look at pregnant women as communal property of sorts – be it restricting abortion rights, criminalizing pregnant women, or just seeing women as straight up incubators.  But wow, experiencing it first-hand sure is a trip!  I’m quite sure I’m not the first pregnant lady to note these, but just a couple of things…

Last Sunday, 24 year-old Melanie Williams was driving alone down a Jacksonville, Florida, road. She was seven-and-a-half months pregnant, bleeding, and feeling very faint. Melanie called 911 for help, telling the dispatcher that she felt like she was going to fall out of her car. The dispatcher told Melanie to pull over, but the line went dead and Melanie continued rushing toward the hospital. Her erratic driving caught the attention of the police, who pulled her over. While they were issuing a ticket, Melanie took off for the the hospital.

Here is where the story gets really disturbing. Melanie ran into the emergency room of St. Vincent’s Hospital as she was pursued by two police officers. The officers caught up with her, jumped her, forced her stomach-down onto the floor by kneeling on her back, and then handcuffed her. All of this while Melanie pleaded with them that she bleeding and needed medical help.

Pregnancy has become ever more “policed”, with a litany of rules for parents-to-be on how to behave, a parenting conference is due to hear.

Researchers at the two-day seminar at Kent University will present fresh analysis of the decision to advise pregnant women to avoid any alcohol.

There have been mixed messages about drinking in pregnancy in recent years.

The impact of mounting efforts to involve fathers in the antenatal period will also be explored.

Newlywed Jarretta Hamilton, an elementary school teacher in her late 30s at Southland Christian School in Florida, went to her supervisors last year to be congratulated on her pregnancy and request maternity leave. But things took an unexpected turn when administrators asked just when, exactly, did she conceive? Refusing to bear false witnesses, Hamilton admitted to the prying busybodies that she had become pregnant three weeks before her wedding day.

In response, Hamilton was fired for engaging in “fornication.” Conveniently, this also meant that the school was off the hook for paying maternity leave. Then, in an added insult and violation of Hamilton’s privacy, her premarital conception was made public to others in the school and parents.

Sometimes, trying to become a mom can be fatal. Especially if you live in a country like Niger, where one in seven women who give birth will die in the process. In Afghanistan and Sierra Leon, it’s one in eight. Those are some crazy numbers.

As a junior at Dartmouth College, Mary went undercover at a local Care Net crisis pregnancy center to find out what would happen to a young woman truly facing pregnancy who walked through those doors. She originally wrote about her experience for the progressive campus paper, the Dartmouth Free Press.

After I was whisked away to the back room for my private interview, the Care Net counselor and I discussed my “pregnancy.” It started out with simple questions about symptoms and sexual history, which were interrupted by the odd question, “Do your parents love you?”

I’m listening to the April 6 BBC Women’s Hour podcast and came across an unfortunate interview with Timothy Johnson, chair of a medical school at an American University, talking about the recent report that placed the US low down on the list of safe places to have a baby.  Maternal health care in the US is in a bad place, and of course the subject of cesarians came up.  The interviewer asked Johnson why cesarians are on the rise in the US?  And he actually responded that women are getting them out of “convenience” and how dare women have the nerve to “delay” childbirth:

Interviewer:  “Why are [women] requesting something, that is, frankly, I mean, I’ve had a couple [cesarians] and it’s painful, it’s pretty unpleasant.  Why would anybody want to do that?”

“For a lot of reasons.  Women are delaying childbirth to their mid to late 30s, people are making poor decisions for convenience, because their mother-in-law is going to be in town to help them out and they decide they want to have their baby and they want to deliver it by cesarian section. “

Wow.  Just wow.  In reality,  cesarians are on the rise in the US not because of “convenience” or because women want tight vaginas (something I’ve heard several times before), but because of the VBAC issue.  The poor state of health care in the US means that doctors are jittery: cesarians seem like a safe alternative when there are potential complications (they really aren’t, and actually increase death rates).  It’s the same with home births and midwives — it’s apparently all well and good for women to want to reclaim choice during the birth process, but as soon as there’s a hint of complication, the institutionalized medical system takes over, for the “sake of the woman”.  It’s a way to control women’s bodies. 

VBAC is Vaginal Birth After Cesarian.  Women who have had one cesarian are banned from having vaginal births ever after.  That’s why cesarians are on the rise.  Women have even taken this to court in the States, fighting for their rights to give birth vaginally, or at home. 

So screw you Timothy Johnson for having the nerve to blame the increasing rise in cesarians on women, without even mentioning the common practice of forced cesarians in the States. 

The officers’ first attempt to forcibly remove her from her car using what is called the “pain compliance hold” failed, so they did what any three rational, fully-grown men would do when faced with one stubborn, stressed-out, visibly pregnant woman: they tasered her. Three times. After the third time Ms. Brooks was tasered, the officers dragged her out of her vehicle and laid her face-down on the street, despite her pleas that she was pregnant and they were hurting her stomach.

The egg is the holy grail. 

250 000 000 sperm.

First to the egg wins.

Pregnant? Or think you’d like to be pregnant sometime and give birth in the United States?

You may be taking more of a risk than you realize.

Pregnant women in the United States have a greater risk of dying from pregnancy- or childbirth-related complications than women in 40 other countries around the world - and this risk is increasing. If you’re African-American - regardless of income level -  your risk of dying from pregnancy- or childbirth-related complications is nearly four times higher than for white women in this country.

According to a new report from Amnesty International, Deadly Delivery, the state of maternal health in the United States is nothing short of a violation of women’s basic human rights.

The bill proposes to use a fetus’s perceived ability to feel pain, rather than its ability to survive outside the womb, as the dividing line between legal and illegal abortions, despite the lack of medical evidence that fetuses can even feel pain before the third trimester.