On May 17 a South Carolina court sentenced a 24-year-old woman to 12 years in prison for homicide. The victim was her fetus; the method of the "murder" was cocaine use.
Eight months pregnant when she miscarried, Regina McKnight is homeless, poor, black, has a learning disability and is addicted to cocaine.
Under South Carolina law, a third trimester fetus is considered to be a person. Prosecutor Greg Hembree told the media, "If the child had been smothered by its mother two weeks after being born, there'd be no question about prosecution."
But McKnight did not smother a new-born child. If she had given birth and, leaving her child at the hospital, smoked cocaine, she would not have been convicted of murder. What McKnight is being punished for is making choices about her body that the state has denied her the right to make.
Life is a risky business. Every day, all of us make decisions that could result in harm to our bodies. But in South Carolina, the state denies pregnant women the right to judge for themselves what risks to their bodies they can take. The power to decide what is an appropriate level of risk has been handed over to the courts. Women's bodies have been reduced to state-controlled incubators.
The South Carolina courts have just decreed smoking cocaine to be an unacceptable risk. But what about working in a smoke-filled environment? Rock climbing? Getting drunk? Driving recklessly? In South Carolina it might just be safer to stay at home for the third trimester lest you be accused of endangering the fetus by getting hit by a bus.
In 1989, 10 prenatal patients at the Charlestown Women's Clinic in South Carolina tested positive for cocaine use after their urine was tested without their knowledge or permission. In 1999, nine of the women were charged with distribution of cocaine to a minor or child abuse. The woman not charged entered rehabilitation instead. She was white, the other nine were black.
This law is a tool to persecute the most vulnerable in US society. Assuming the right to punish women for their most personal choices, it is simply an extension of the racist, anti-worker and anti-poor regime that is inherent to the capitalist system.
Capitalism attempts to convince women that they are solely responsible for the health and the production of a future cache of workers. At the same time, driving wages down and unemployment up, it makes it impossible for many women to actually ensure the health of their children. The corporate-owned media and the corporate-directed state then demonise these women as child abusers and inadequate mothers, while the creators of the social conditions that underlie the problem escape unscathed.
South Carolina's dramatic attacks on reproductive rights may soon be mirrored across the United States. Since George W. Bush was elected, he has:
- Stopped groups which offer abortion counselling from being recipients of government funding, either within the US or overseas. This has created a funding crisis for family planning.
- Funded investigations into mechanisms for overturning the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the abortion pill RU486.
- Sent a support message to the anti-choice "March for Life" rally which stated, "We share a great goal: to work toward a day when each child is protected in law".
- Promised to sign the bill banning late-term abortions.
- Appointed anti-choice advocates to the crucial positions of health secretary and attorney general.
The United States is gearing up for a battle over the right of women not only to control their bodies, but also their lives. This battle is at the cutting edge of the struggle for women's liberation. In the meantime, as Regina McKnight begins her first month behind bars, women in South Carolina have more than grief to deal with if they miscarry.
BY ALISON DELLIT
[The author is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]