Will Tennessee legalize the New Jane Crow?
THE STATE of Tennessee is about to establish a dangerous new precedent in the war on women.
Both houses of the state legislature recently passed SB 1391, a bill that would sanction women's arrest and incarceration on the basis of the outcomes of their pregnancies. If Gov. Bill Haslam does not veto the measure, it would be the first law in the U.S. to criminalize pregnant women for the use of illegal or prescription drugs.
Supporters of reproductive rights are trying to pressure Haslam into stopping SB 1391 from becoming law.
Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, hundreds of pregnant women have suffered unwanted medical interventions, arrests and incarcerations, based on a range of flimsy assertions about the health of their pregnancies--very often without legal or medical grounding for the claim that the women were responsible for harming a fetus or newborn.
More at http://socialistworker.org/2014/04/23/will-tennessee-legalize-new-jane-crow .
