Do Pregnant Women Have Rights?

By Lynn M. Paltrow, AlterNet. Posted April 22, 2004.

Imagine a law declaring that upon becoming pregnant a woman loses her right to bodily integrity, life and liberty. Such a law would undoubtedly result in strong opposition across party lines. But in fact such laws are being passed -- though rather than presented as an attack on women's fundamental rights, they are advanced as fetal rights measures such as the Unborn Victims of Violence Act recently signed into law by President Bush. Increasingly, fetal rights are being used to undermine the legal status of pregnant women.

In America, both constitutional and common law recognizes the rights of all adults to informed consent and bodily integrity. While individuals may be required to submit to immunizations to protect the public health in general, our courts are not permitted to balance the health interests of one person against those of another. In 1978 Robert McFall, suffering from a rare bone marrow disease sought a court order to force his cousin David Shimp, the only compatible donor, to submit to a transplant. The court declined explaining: "For our law to compel the Defendant to submit to an intrusion of his body would change every concept and principle upon which our society is founded. To do so would defeat the sanctity of the individual and would impose a rule which would know no limits." Forcibly restraining someone to make them submit to surgery for the benefit of another would "raise the specter of the swastika and the Inquisition, reminiscent of the horrors this portends."

In the name of fetal rights however, pregnant women are being forcibly restrained. In 1984, for example, a Nigerian woman pregnant and hospitalized in Chicago was forced to have a C-section. She refused the surgery because she planned to return to Nigeria where she would be unable to access C-sections for future births. The hospital obtained a court order and forced her to undergo the procedure. Hospital staff tied her down with leather wrist and ankle cuffs while she screamed for help.

Another hospital obtained a court order to force a pregnant woman to undergo a blood transfusion. Doctors "yelled at and forcibly restrained, overpowered and sedated" the woman in order to carry out the order.

In Washington, DC, doctors sought a court order to force Ayesha Madyun to have a C-section. The doctors asserted that the fetus faced a 50-75 percent chance of infection if not delivered surgically. The court, apparently viewing the pregnant woman as having no more rights than a slab of meat, said, "[a]ll that stood between the Madyun fetus and its independent existence, separate from its mother, was put simply, a doctor's scalpel." With that, the court granted the order and the scalpel sliced through Ms. Madyun's flesh, the muscles of her abdominal wall, and her uterus. When the procedure was done, there was no evidence of infection.

All of these women were denied the right to bodily integrity and physical liberty and their fetuses were granted more rights than any legal person under law.

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