Boston.com reported this week that Amber Abreu, a teenager who immigrated from the Dominican Republic just over a year ago, was charged with “procuring a miscarriage.” For the crime of trying to end a presumably unwanted pregnancy, this 18 year-old could get seven years in jail. Even more horrifying, prosecutors are considering changing the charge to homicide. Apparently, in Massachusetts abortion is illegal for a fetus over 24 weeks, so the prosecution is conducting an autopsy to see if they can nail this young woman for murder.
Abreu took a drug developed to treat ulcers, probably because she could neither find nor afford an abortion. There is anecdotal evidence that this drug, which costs only $1 per pill, is widely used in the Dominican to bring on contractions during an unwanted pregnancy. She gave birth in a hospital and the baby died four days later. It turns out that all of her relatives say they did not even know she was pregnant.
Here is a girl trying to make a new life for herself, working at Macy’s. We know nothing about how she became pregnant, but apparently she didn’t feel able to tell a single person. And how was she to find a legitimate abortion? They’re not too easy to obtain in these reactionary times. Most medical schools are not even teaching doctors to perform abortions. My friend Lucky pointed me to a curriculum mapping project by the Medical Students for Choice that “found that, on average, more class time is dedicated to Viagra than to abortion procedures, pregnancy options counseling, or abortion law and policy. This glimpse into U.S. and Canadian medical curricula reveals that abortion is not a standard component of preclinical education.”
I sent the article to some close friends who have a long history of reproductive rights activism. Sue wrote me, “I can't stand this sort of thing. It's totally uncalled for. The girl needs help and counseling, care and concern, not a criminal case brought against her.” Rayah had a similar reaction: “What a dreadful story, and what a loaded headline [Alleged Bid to Abort Leads to Baby's Death], constructing this young girl as a murderer. No mention of the risk to her health. Where is the girl getting support from?” A third friend answered that the ACLU has joined the girl’s team and that some women activists helped her family post bail.
These men who value fetuses so much more than they value women have managed to transform their fundamentalism into legislation. First they terrorize abortion providers and then they criminalize desperate young people like Amber Abreu. So what’s it all about? I was in a wonderful London group through the 90s called Women Against Fundamentalism. Our position was that every type of fundamentalism is, at its core, about the control of women and reproduction. I’d rather be wrong, but these right-wingers prove us right, again and again
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