Tennessee Woman Faces New Charges for Allegedly Attempting to Self-Induce Abortion

[niyad]

Tennessee Woman Faces New Charges for Allegedly Attempting to Self-Induce Abortion


A Tennessee woman accused of attempting to induce her own abortion pled not guilty yesterday to three new felony charges from a grand jury including aggravated assault with a weapon, attempted procurement of a miscarriage and attempted criminal abortion. In September of 2015, police allege that Anna Yocca, 32, used a coat hanger to attempt an abortion. At the time she was 24 weeks pregnant. Her boyfriend took her to the hospital when she started excessively bleeding, and two weeks later she gave birth. She has been in jail for almost a year on a $200,000 bond. Yocca was originally charged with attempted murder but her lawyer had it dismissed, arguing that Tennessee’s statute does not apply to self-induced abortion and pursuing that charge would be “absurd, illogical and unconstitutional.”

Another recent high-profile case of alleged self-induced abortion involves Purvi Patel, the woman who was released from jail in September after her 20 year feticide conviction was overturned by the Indiana Court of Appeals. The court determined that the feticide law was meant to punish third party actors who attack pregnant women, not women who self-induce abortion, providing important legal precedent against the prosecution of women who have abortions, are suspected of having abortions, or miscarry. Patel was the first woman in the country to be convicted of feticide for self-inducing an abortion.

Abortion rights advocates point to Yocca and Patel as examples of the dire straits women will go to when they cannot access safe and legal abortion. Since 2014, Tennessee lawmakers have passed at least five laws restricting abortion access, including a 48-hour waiting period coupled with mandatory state counseling that requires at least two trips to a clinic, insurance coverage restrictions, and a ban on telemedicine for medication abortion.

Voters this year mounted a legal challenge against a 2014 Tennessee constitutional amendment, known as Amendment 1, which seeks to remove protections to a woman’s right to abortion even in cases of rape, incest or life endangerment. Plaintiffs are asking the court to order state election officials to recount the 2014 vote, which passed with a narrow 53 percent, arguing that the state did not count the votes properly in accordance with the Tennessee Constitution.

http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2016/11/29/tennessee-woman-faces-new-charges-for-allegedly-attempting-to-self-induce-abortion/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FeministDailyNews+%28Feminist+Daily+News%29

[Bettie]

1. Disgusting

but this is the future folks. This is what we'll be seeing more and more of as Pence and Ryan get to enact their agenda.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[CountAllVotes]

3. and so it begins ...

Have noted that many dry cleaners still use the old metal coat hangers if you are looking for one ...

[niyad]

4. frightening to think what we are going back to.

[CountAllVotes]

21. This was one of the most important reasons to vote HRC

SUPREME COURT

What few rights women have/HAD are at grave risk again.

Damned the lot of them!

No woman should have to have a child she does not want! Period!

[Ilsa]

12. Steel chopsticks might work, too, but I bet the tip would

Need to be adjusted to "scrape" the uterine wall.

I thought there were herbal remedies to cause abortion, but I'm not sure.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

17. The herbal remedies to cause abortion are not very reliable,

meaning they don't cause abortion/miscarriage. There is a chemical abortion available, but that's very different from herbal means.

While I don't have personal acquaintance with using any of them, I was an adult before Roe v Wade, and I remember lots of stories of women trying to self-abort. Most of them are true horror stories.

Twenty or so years after Roe v Wade, I recall being aware of the fact that new doctors simply were unaware of what it was like before then, how many women either self-aborted or hired what was known as a back-alley abortion and often wound up in the ER. Often they were maimed or dead.

What opponents of abortion simply completely unaware of is that women will seek abortions, regardless of the law. Outlawing them doesn't make them go away. If, as in Romania under Ceausescu, women are carefully monitored and prevented, thanks to a police state, from getting abortions, the unwanted babies are often abandoned. I recall quite clearly the stories that came out after the fall of Communism in that country, of thousands of warehoused babies and young children. They weren't adopted out, and spent what often turned out to be very short lives in complete misery.

[Ilsa]

20. I remember Ceausescu also, and he and his wife were finally

Hung in publ8c for their crimes. I also remember reading about the abandoned babies and how pitiful and disastrous their lives were.

I was only a teen at time of Roe v Wade, so I wasn't personally familiar with abortion stories, just that some women were desperate. Older friends told me what they and their friends went through to get safe abortions: pass ghe hat until enough was collected to get a girl to CA or NY, or any close place where abortion was safe/legal.

[barbtries]

5. sometimes

i am really glad i am post-menopausal.

then i remember: i have a granddaughter. i have a daughter-in-law, and then there are millions upon millions of young women whose rights are being stripped!

what do you call a nightmare that rolls out slow and goes on for years and is only in motion during your waking hours? oh, yeah, the USA in the 21st century.

i hate this insanity.

[niyad]

6. I am so glad to be past that myself, but, like you, think of all the younger women I know--

we are going back, back, back.

Days of the Theocracy

Words and music by Kristin Lems

© 1979, 2005, 2015 Kleine Ding Music (BMI)

First they fight abortion, birth control is next,

Then comes sex if you’re not married, finally, out goes sex!

Put the prayers back in the schools, install "parochiaid,"

Allow for corporal punishment, and then you got it made!

Chorus: We’re going back, back to the good ole days

When men were really men and women knew their place

Back, back a couple of centuries

And welcome back the days of the theocracy!

2. The family is so holy, there must be no divorce

And if a wife is not content, she must adjust, of course

And if he’s forced to beat her, it’s all for her own good

She must know what her limits are, as any woman should.,

(chorus)

3. The next to go is daycare,

it’s all a commie plot!

What could be more fulfilling than a child, wanted or not?

A woman’s world is housework, God wanted it that way

A salaried job degrades her since she never works for pay

(chorus)

4. They teach us women’s lot is "love honor and obey"

And while their crusty notions seem like jokes to us today,

They’re sitting in the Capitol, they’re voting on our lives

If we don’t stop them soon, our freedom will not long survive!

Alt chorus:

No going back, back to the bad ole days...

When men were really masters and women were their slaves

let's go ahead, ahead for future centuries,

And build a world that’s based on true democracy

And build a world that’s based on true equality!

Ah – person!

[barbtries]

19. love it.

one thing that irks the shit out of me is this modern day "theocracy" is pushed by faithless hypocrites. they have about as much use for the bible as they do for democracy.

[meow2u3]

7. Sometimes...

I'm glad I'm postmenopausal and an old bachelorette.

But then again, I have 2 nieces, one who lives in Texas. And she's a Type 1 diabetic. She'll have to deal with the backwards attitudes of men-children who think God died and left them in charge--and can tell women how to live.

[Ilsa]

13. We have to continue the fight because other older women

Started it for us. We need to pay it forward.

[Laffy Kat]

8. Welcome back to pre-1971.

Get ready to see a lot more of this sort of thing.

[bdamomma]

9. this is a slap in the face

to all women, this is a white supremacist thing to push us back that we are emotionally weak and should be kept "barefoot and pregnant" and especially if they want to start their master race.

Women are in charge of their own bodies.

[niyad]

10. and that thought makes the patriarchy absolutely nuts

[Nay]

11. I've been urging young women to get (or switch to) an IUD for the foreseeable

future. It lasts a long time, works well, and is fairly trouble-free.

[Ligyron]

14. If I were a woman I would get an IUD yesterday.

If I were of child bearing years and desired none in the near future.

Prescriptions can be terminated.

What a crock, I thought those laws were being overturned in the courts but now, who knows?

[pansypoo53219]

15. sounds like sharia law to me.

[Greybnk48]

16. Burn her at the stake!

That'll do it.

[elmac]

18. Religious nutjobs, angry nutjobs or just plain stupid nutjobs

just elected a president who thinks pussy grabbing should be legal in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. A country where you must give up the rights to your body to the state when you are pregnant. A country where you can be thrown in prison for decades for having an illegal abortion or miscarriage. We are now the Misogynist States of ameriKa.

[niyad]

22. . . .