Attack of the pregnant people
This again. A piece by Katie Klabusich on a horrible Tennessee abortion law is undermined by Klabusich’s near-perfect attempt to avoid using the word “women” entirely. I still think erasing women from the abortion issue is politically suicidal and grotesquely insulting.
It starts with the title: Inside The “Fetal Assault Law” Sending Pregnant People To Prison.
And it continues with the text:
Tomorrow, a subcommittee in the Tennessee legislature will consider a bill to permanently extend the most horrific anti-pregnant person law you’ve never heard of.
House Bill (HB) 1660 and the Senate companion (SB 1629) would remove the built-in expiration date of July 1, 2016 for a criminal code provision—dubbed “Tennessee’s Fetal Assault Law” by reproductive justice advocates—that allows the prosecution and subsequent 15-year prison sentence for any pregnant person who ingests an illegal drug.
…
Nearly 40 advocacy groups focusing on reproductive rights, addiction, and/or criminal justice are calling for the law to sunset, and for the redirection of taxpayer funds being used to imprison sick people who happen to be pregnant at a time when they need treatment.
…
There are 95 counties in Tennessee and only 33 state-funded abuse agencies equipped to treat pregnant people…
…
The Tea Party wave, “personhood” emphasis within the “pro-life” movement, and the increasing power and prevalence of for-profit prisons have created a perfect storm for more prosecution of pregnant people and those who have recently given birth.
Then there’s a break, where she mars her nearly perfect omission of women:
Unsurprisingly, when these laws are used with broader reach than advertised at their passage, it is women of color—particularly low-income women of color—who are most often prosecuted for fetal assault.
Two mentions of women – but the crime is not repeated.
Amnesty International has gotten involved as well, reinforcing the well-supported claim that jailing and surveilling people while they’re pregnant is a massive invasion of privacy.
…
The entanglement of health care and law enforcement highlights an important distinction between intention of the law—purportedly to provide care for pregnant people as well as the potential children they’re carrying—and its usage.
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The punishment of pregnant people comes into play when overzealous, often ideologically-driven prosecutors and attorneys general use fetal assault/harm laws to advance a “pro-life” agenda.
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The symposium attended by more than 250 participants from around the country addressed human and civil rights, bodily autonomy, current available treatment options for pregnant people, recommendations from leading medical professionals, and the impact of the fetal assault law on people’s lives.
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- The criminal justice system is not an effective vehicle to reduce NAS rates or to help pregnant people access appropriate substance use disorder treatment.
Emphasis mine throughout.
How is this not just blatant, shameless erasure? How is this not just “All Lives Matter” or “I don’t see color”? How is this anything but insulting?
Women of color can be women, apparently, but white females have no assumed gender. I… that’s…
It’s racist. I don’t know if the writer is erasing trans men of color or erasing white women or saying white women should be recognized as people but women of color are merely women. It could be interpreted a lot of ways. But not one of them isn’t creepily racial in distinguishing where the women women is used.
Isn’t it though?
My guess is that she thought (or intuited without even noticing she was doing it) that it was ok to erase white women but not ok to erase women of color. If that’s the right guess, it means she realizes on some level that it’s insulting to women (and that it erases them).
It makes me want to smash things that feminist women now think they have to erase women.
Have you ever seen any answer to the question of how this is not erasure other than people saying it’s inclusive?
I haven’t. Arg!!!!
So instead of the Republican War on Women we now have the War on People? Do we need to change the Violence Against Women Act to the Violence Against People Act?
We should try it in other places, and see how it sounds. “There is an under-representation of people in STEM fields.”? “People make up only 7% of the directors of Broadway shows.”? Or how about this one – remake an old favorite – “Why people aren’t funny.”
Reductio ad absurdum.
The closest I’ve seen was a few weeks back on FTB. The consensus in that thread at least seemed to boil down to trans* women are women, (some?) trans* men have some of the biological needs of women, women are people, using any phrase other than people is exclusionary and therefore erasure. If we all just called everyone people and acted reasonably the world would be a better and simpler place.
There is a kind of logic to it all, but the only way you can make it work is with that last statement. Problem is that we do not live in a world where everyone acts reasonably. If you ignore the political reality that there are several different movements which all have control and subjugation of women as core principles then you are in for a severe hiding (both politically and potentially in the physical world ultimately).
The refusal that this is actually a knock down, drag out battle seems lost on some people.
We should not, and do not need to, erase or demean trans* folk, or women, or poor people or people of colour. We should be empowering all of these oppressed people and enable them to work together for the good of all.
It’s so frustrating.
@ 4 iknklast
Excuse me, may I remind you that feminism is the radical notion that people are people too?
;-)
Silentbob – I have a t-shirt with that on it – women are people. Therefore, it must be true, because a t-shirt wouldn’t lie!
@2.
My guess, this was originally drafted with “woman/women” used everywhere. Then a search for the word pregnant to
“fix” nearby occurrences of “woman/women” to “person/people” in a later draft. The two uses of “women” are the ones that don’t occur near the word pregnant.
@Rob #5
Yeah, the core problem is that to “the Enemy” (work with me, please) transwomen aren’t women, and women aren’t people. For the purposes of getting any actual work done you need to attack the existing framework that They have laid out rather than playing find/replace with words and calling it inclusive.
Oppressed people generally can’t work together for the good of all because they’d rather fight over who’s more oppressed or stomp on others needs to advance their own. See “intersectional feminism” become subjugation of feminism to other causes.
Why couldn’t the phrase “women and trans men” have been used? Why wouldn’t that be inclusive enough? Covers all the people affected by this legislation.
My issue – and I’m sure I’m not alone here – is that without being able to use the word “women” we can’t identify how women (and trans men) are disproportionately targeted by restrictive reproductive rights legislation. We are, quite literally, losing the words we need to frame the problem.
Worse than that, we seem to be voluntarily giving up those words. I don’t get it. I honestly don’t understand how abandoning the use of “woman” helps trans people. Trans women aren’t affected by this legislation – nor are the “cis”women who are infertile. Saying this is a “women’s issue” doesn’t exclude them – it just doesn’t apply to them. OK, I’m all for acknowledging that trans men are affected by this in the same way as “cis” women so just include the phrase “trans men”. Specific acknowledgement of the groups affected, not the woolly, vague and politically null suggestion that “people” are affected by this.
@SteamshovelMama #10:
It doesn’t, actually. It still doesn’t cover people who don’t identify as part of the binary at all. (nonbinary or “enbys”) I
I did find it telling that the only mention of women was specifically ‘women of color’ x2. Thanks to the My feminism will be intersectional and it will be shit movement, women without further qualifiers cannot be mentioned without the referee calling an erasure foul, but all subsets of women with qualifiers are permitted. This intersectional bullshit has progressed to the point where the category formerly known as ‘women’ or ‘female’ has been goddamn abolished and replaced with multiple ‘[qualifier]-women’ fiefdoms.
I guess because those former subcategories passed their qualifying heats at the Oppression Olympics…
I think a key point is that the legislation restricting abortion access is not being written with trans people as the intended target. It is being aimed directly and explicitly at women; opposition to it has to begin by saying that this is not OK. Does anyone really think the people drafting these horrible laws are thinking “Ooh, we can hurt some trans people too, bonus!”?
The “people” formulation also seems to risk blurring into the “fetal personhood” thing. If all the abortion rights rhetoric shifts to “pregnant people” rather than “women”, the right wing will start talking about “people in pregnancy” and use that to include both the mother and the fetus.
Like, how many pregnant *people* does one see who AREN’T women?
@John #13
They’re out there, somewhere. Or so we’re told. And it’s very, very important they feel included.
It goes like this –
What kinds of people are there?
…There are men and there are women.
What about trans people, and non-binary?
…There are women and trans women, men and trans men, and non-binary.
But trans women ARE women!
…You know, you’re quite right.
…There are men and women and non-binary.
Stop excluding trans women!!
…Eh?
Tigger – you just put that in about as lucid a fashion as possible. This captures the whole dynamic of this debate. Thanks.
While it’s correct that anti-abortion laws stem from sexism, the author is not wrong in making sure she addresses everyone that these laws can potentially impact.
But police violence happens to white people as well as people of color so Black Lives Matter fails to address that, right?
No.