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Florida lawyer argues pregnant inmate’s fetus is being illegally detained
- danpalmer 4y agoWhat's the endgame here? It's not clear from the article. Assuming they're not suggesting that the fetus be removed from the mother, are they aiming to get the mother freed? Are they just aiming to have the mother temporarily moved to somewhere with better healthcare? Are they aiming to make a point about how fetal-personhood doesn't work with many aspects of the law?
- wccrawford 4y ago"says the jail staff has endangered the fetus by refusing proper prenatal care and putting her in situations like the incident in the inmate transport van." "That would require Harrell to be released until the child is born, the writ argues." I'm inclined to believe that the lawyer really does have the child's best interest at heart, and anything they're asking for that helps the mother is really intended to help the child.
- izzydata 4y ago[flagged]
- NationalPark 4y agoI think it's more of a sovereign citizen "hail Mary" type move to get her out of jail. Even in states that don't have a constitutional notion of "fetal personhood", a pregnant inmate is still entitled to adequate prenatal care, and that's the relief they should be seeking, not habeas corpus for the unborn child.
- thebooktocome 4y agoIf it can be legally proved that the jail is incapable of providing adequate care (seems pretty likely, considering how terrible American prisons are generally), then they’re within their rights to enjoin the court for other remedies. Time to see if the courts actually care about unborn personhood, as much as they’ve been crowing about abortion.
- benj111 4y agoThat's not the case. If you were imprisoned even though you hadn't committed a crime, the adequacy of the care you receive while in prison is completely irrelevant. If the child is innocent it shouldn't be imprisoned, simple as. Assuming you believe an unborn foetus to be a full fledged human being of course.
- Georgelemental 4y agoThe child is stuck in the womb of his/her mother either way, it makes no difference where that womb is.
- orwin 4y agoI mean, sunlight exposure, nutrients, prison violence... The fœtus is exposed to all of this, and more. Tbh I don't care, except if she wants to carry the future baby to term. Then you'll have a carrenced baby without mother contact during his first three months, probably fed with powdered milk that does not contain any antibodies. Nice start in the world.
- cld8483 4y ago> I think it's more of a sovereign citizen "hail Mary" type move to get her out of jail. It would only delay the inevitable by a few months at most, right? Trials regularly get delayed for years anyway, so they may as well delay her sentence for a few months.
- nickpeterson 4y agoWell newborns need to be breastfed by their mothers to be healthy… don’t underestimate motivated lawyers.
- gameman144 4y agoBaby formula exists, though, and is a totally viable alternative, so this one seems like it'd be thrown out pretty quick.
- jfk13 4y ago"My religion requires me to breastfeed my infant naturally."
- cld8483 4y agoEven if that worked, it would still only get her something like a 6-12 month reprieve. She's been convicted of murder, none of these ploys will get her out of going to prison eventually.
- gameman144 4y agoMight as well skip the middleman and go straight to "my religion requires me not to be imprisoned".
- nickpeterson 4y agoWhy not? How is this rule any different than any of the others in a religion?
- salawat 4y agoIf you have to sue to get adequate prenatal care, then only pregnant inmates who know that will get said prenatal care. If precedent is set that demands the fetus' legal innocence must be accounted for, this basically forces the legal system/corrections into a position where they have to make a move to really telegraph what is more important. That an innocent not be subjected to the penal system, or that the incarcerated are afforded the dignity of reasonable medical care, which then has to be factored into cost of incarceration. It'll also test the will around really upholding fetal rights once it starts manifesting in the form of $$$ required on the Government's part to pay for it's own externalities w.r.t. incarceration. This is actually a neat little wedge that'll get driven in between the social/fiscal conservatives in that the last thing the fiscal's want is more needs for entitlement funding, especially if it involves the incarcerated; all of which could be elided by ignoring the thorny issue of a fetus claim to personhood. Without that, the social conservatives lose a leg of their anti-abortion stool. Either way, I can see the headlines/arguments now: >Shit, 3 square meals a day, work, and government funded medical care, sign me up! >Inmates get better care than law abiding citizens... ...Might even force everyone to realize this whole "no one can compete against a Medicare that can negotiate" is a sign of the retarded levels of inefficiency in the healthcare space so we can actually get some scrutiny on why the hell things are so janked in that department. Either way, I love disruptive cases like these.
- pnutjam 4y ago[flagged]
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoExactly. This feels similar to the type of "hail Mary" when a woman tried to argue that she should be allowed to drive in the carpool lane alone because she was pregnant and thus her fetus should count as an extra passenger. In that case, though, a judge agreed with her and her ticket was dismissed, and a bill was even filed in the TX House to explicitly allow pregnant women to use the carpool lane.
- WorkerBee28474 4y ago"The petition by attorney William M. Norris says the “unborn child” is innocent and should be discharged from jail so it can receive proper care. That would require Harrell to be released until the child is born, the writ argues." "Without proper care, though, Norris said he fears the fetus will be harmed before or during childbirth." "In 2018, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that all pregnant defendants should be granted habeas corpus and allowed to await trial at home."
- pkdpic 4y agoMakes enough sense to me. Or we could just provide world-class healthcare to inmates. Or just put prisons next to hospitals. Or make them the same thing. Honestly the last time I was visiting someone in a hospital for an extended period it felt like a prison. Not looking forward to eventually dying in one. Maybe they'll be full of backflipping atlas nurse robots by then...
- djohnston 4y agoYour physician will be automated before your nurse.
- mindslight 4y agoIt seems like most physicianing has already been automated, while continuing to run on top of skinjobs. I mean, 20 minute appointments where they haven't studied your previous history, don't engage with what you say except to explain it away, and just pick recommendations from a limited set of go-to options? Most pedagogical k-maps have more complexity.
- misnome 4y ago> Or we could just provide world-class healthcare to inmates I mean, that's a big jump. Might be worth starting with US-class, although I doubt it's affordable.
- jonathankoren 4y ago
- boringg 4y agoThey are trying to make a fetus get the same rights as a person in an effort. It's an attempt to open up another front on the pro-life:pro choice front opening up.
- csours 4y agoOr it's an effort to show that a fetus is not automatically a person from conception. I think almost every reasonable person would agree that any fetus who can survive outside a mother is a person, and that personhood starts at some point before that viability test; I think there is a lot of room to discuss a question of personhood in the first few weeks of development. My personal view is that personhood requires a mind, and here on our physical earth, a mind requires a brain with some level of development. My personal view is that level of development is not reached in the first trimester. You are perfectly free to disagree with me on this! I am not trying to unduly influence anyone's point of view. I cannot say you are wrong if you disagree! I would like to gently point out that there are facts in this discussion, but there are also opinions, deeply held beliefs and analysis. Only the facts can be fact checked. The opinions, beliefs and analysis require some kind of framework for discussion.
- cld8483 4y agoBoth these abortion-related takes are incredibly cynical. I know lawyers aren't people but even they might earnestly care about a pregnant woman and her fetus/child...
- csours 4y agoMy comment is not meant to preclude that. I do not expect to get a complete analysis of a situation from internet comments.
- freejazz 4y ago> I know lawyers aren't people Yuck. Of all the comments I see, the ones from lawyers seem the most human and less misanthropic or so purposefully obtuse as to suggest one has no connection to society at all, etc, like I see from so many developers drooling over their edge-case applications of definitions as if the law was some sort of "whatever you can say goes" as opposed focusing on what actually makes sense.
- CamperBob2 4y agoAll (or most) of the above, hopefully. If fetal personhood made any sense at all, it would have been introduced at some point in the last 6000 years of human civilization, and not invented a couple of years ago by the Republicans. Arguments like this serve to highlight both the impracticality and the sheer goofiness of the idea.
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoPretty much every prior civilization dealt with this by making anyone who was a dependent into property from a legal perspective, maybe with an asterisk for "don't beat them too much". Once you stop doing that all sorts of edge cases start emerging.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago> Pretty much every prior civilization Incredibly broad claim here that frankly I don't think a global view of history anywhere near supports. Either extremely narrow view of "prior civilization" or just straight ignorant. Even the concept of personal property isn't near universal!
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoOh please. How were kids treated in Ancient Europe? The Ancient near east? Medieval Europe and the near east? What about ancient ancient China? Specifics vary but generally speaking in all these cultures kids had rights on par with slaves, maybe with a little bit more protection from physical violence depending on the society and whoever the head of their household was had property rights over them. Women were generally treated a little better but not much. Only within the past couple hundred years did it stop being acceptable in the richest nations to sell a kid off as a quasi-indentured servant. Women were treated a little better but not much. I'm sure there's some north American tribes that treated everyone much more equally but they are the exception not the rule. Someone of your bent should know this.
- 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago>Are they aiming to make a point about how fetal-personhood doesn't work with many aspects of the law? Possibly. But the point has already been raised many times with regard to child-personhood and the courts have generally solved that by tailoring their precedents so narrowly as to not preclude future case by case decision making.
- RC_ITR 4y agoSure, but this is a very specific case where you cannot really do that without being completely disingenuous (which to be clear, may be the outcome that happens). You can very easily not send a child to jail (because they have full legal personhood), but right now this fetus is considered 'part of the mother' as it relates to incarceration. Hard to argue that a fetus has some constitutional rights, but isn't subject to the Fourth Amendment. Like I said, a judge will make the argument that the fetus' environment is the womb and by that definition, their circumstances have not changed by being in jail, but that feels thin?
- ElfinTrousers 4y ago> Like I said, a judge will make the argument that the fetus' environment is the womb But then, a lawyer could argue that the mother's imprisonment affects the womb environment (bad food, bad medical care, constant high levels of stress). IANAL but that argument doesn't immediately seem ridiculous to me.
- BaculumMeumEst 4y agopresumably the lawyer is representing his client to the best of his ability and pursuing all legal avenues to keep her out of prison
- AdrianB1 4y agoEndgame in my country is that pregnant women cannot be imprisoned for any reason, plus a couple of years post birth; we have cases where they get pregnant again and again until the prison sentence ends, so they never spend a day in prison. It is used sometimes as a "get out of jail card" as a woman that is already in prison can get pregnant to get out.
- scarby2 4y agoIn my country they just have a secure maternity ward with access to specialist care. After birth the child is allowed to live with it's mother inside a specially equipped prison. The child is in no legal sense detained as it is free to be sent to live with anyone else should the mother choose for someone else to raise the child.
- AdrianB1 4y agoYour country has a wiser system than mine.
- olddustytrail 4y agoIn your country (which one btw?) what percentage of women are under sentence but out due to pregnancy/childbirth vs those imprisoned?
- AdrianB1 4y agoRomania. I don't have official statistics, there were some news also mentioning it. I don't think anybody is counting it to avoid public rage. About 10 years ago I read about 2 sisters that had 33 children in total, I don't remember what was the crime, just the county they lived in. Not all the kids were to avoid jail, only a few.
- olddustytrail 4y agoI think no-one is counting it because it's such a tiny number that it's ridiculous to even care about. Read the second paragraph you just wrote and realise how absurd it sounds. You're worried about two women?
- JustSomeNobody 4y agoYes, no, yes. I think it'll be interesting to see how this case and others play out.
- DueDilligence 4y ago[flagged]
- gertrunde 4y agoIt's not entirely clear which group of people you are referring to there... But either way, I suspect you may have mis-assumed the content of the linked article.
- miga 4y agoFoetus itself does not have agency, and thus cannot be detained. And born child would probably stay with its mother anyway.
- rootusrootus 4y ago> And born child would probably stay with its mother anyway. Not if she's in prison, it won't.
- raydiatian 4y ago[flagged]
- causi 4y agoThe state isn't stopping the fetus from leaving; the inmate is.
- Timon3 4y agoThis feels similar to "the mother didn't kill the kid; the hot car did". If the state is forcing the woman to stay in a situation which is dangerous to the fetus, surely the woman which is forced to carry it to term is not responsible for the situation itself?
- causi 4y agoIt being dangerous for the fetus seems like a separate issue she should be suing the prison about. Particularly since this is an 8-month fetus that's entirely capable of surviving outside her body were she to give birth immediately. If you had a rare blood type and a disease that required daily transfusions, and the only donor was in prison for murder, should that murderer be released so you can stay alive without having to enter a prison?
- Timon3 4y agoYour described scenario is not comparable, since the issue is not that the woman doesn't want to be in prison, it's that she fears her fetus will die, which seems well-reasoned (not even mentioning the potential damage done to her in said process). So if we make your scenario comparable, and there is a good probability I might die during one of my visits - then yes, I definitely would like the option not to enter the prison for said process, and it seems incredibly cruel to force both the prisoner and his blood to stay in the prison, and to force me to get my transfusions there. Why can there not be any accomodations made? > It being dangerous for the fetus seems like a separate issue she should be suing the prison about. I can't stress enough what a strange and uncaring attitude this is. Here you have the state forcing somebody to be in prison, and the prison is in terrible conditions. Why is it not the states fault that she is put into those conditions? Why should she have to sue the prison for this? Florida is forcing her to be in those conditions, specifically both in prison and pregnant. Why is she responsible for ensuring she doesn't suffer conditions where her unborn child might die?
- helf 4y ago[flagged]
- xg15 4y ago[flagged]
- paxcoder 4y ago[flagged]
- somebehemoth 4y agoIs your left arm your property or your body?
- jtbayly 4y agoDoes your left arm have different DNA?
- somebehemoth 4y agoWhat is more likely? “The left” view fetuses as part of the woman’s body or “the left” view fetuses as slaves. Does DNA somehow make the bad faith “slave” take more palatable?
- paxcoder 4y ago[dead]
- freejazz 4y ago[flagged]
- rootusrootus 4y agoA bit less than that, as I recall it was 3/5.
- frankreyes 4y agoInside the womb?
- duxup 4y agoThe claim is that inadequate medical care is providing. If adequate care was provided would this still be a legal issue? The fetus as a person cannot act on its rights / communicate that it wants to go elsewhere. It can’t act independently.
- barbazoo 4y ago> The fetus as a person cannot act on its rights / communicate that it wants to go elsewhere. I'm wondering, what about people with physical or developmental disabilities, they are often affected similarly, don't they still have the same rights?
- lovich 4y agoI believe the lawyer is actually making a habeus corpus claim as the fetus hasn’t been charged with a crime. The facts about not receiving proper care are just additional information about the damage the allegedly illegal detainment is causing
- bpodgursky 4y agoWouldn't this logic implicate all (non-incarcerated) mothers in kidnapping? We have no evidence that the fetus prefers being out of jail to being in jail. Maybe it doesn't want to go to the grocery store, or take a car ride. The mother is making those choices, and it's not clear that her choices align with the fetus more than the state's.
- 4y ago
- c-linkage 4y agoI've always thought a pregnant woman who doesn't want the baby should have the sheriff serve an eviction notice. When the fetus fails to vacate then bring a court case to force the eviction. Of course it's ludicrous, bit think of all of the case law that could be generated that should, if there is any logic to law at all, prevent reproductive restrictions.
- int_19h 4y agoAbortion as a form of self-defense is a long-standing argument in this debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion
- paxcoder 4y ago[flagged]
- vkou 4y agoSame way that you should probably be restricted from using me as a personal blood bank for nine months. I understand that you'll die without transfusions, but that's your problem, not mine. It's not murder to not support you, just like it's not murder when the grocery store refuses to feed me for free, or when you refuse to open your house to me as a place I can live in, or when a doctor refuses to treat me, or when a prospective organ donor doesn't want to give up a kidney. There are a few situations where this support can be compelled in our society, but we place an incredibly high bar on doing so, and an even higher one when it comes to questions of body autonomy.
- paxcoder 4y agoIf a child is conceived, it is not a usurper, it is the most innocent party involved. When people have sex, they risk conceiving a child. This new human being is created in the woman's body, the place designed to host it. So unlike my hooking up to your bloodstream, the baby's dependence on you is perfectly natural. The two things aren't equivalent. I have no claim to you (plus you probably aren't responsible for my condition - not that the child is dying, nota bene). Besides, can you kill an infant in your home so that you don't have to feed them before foster care can take them? I support your choice to abstain from sex. I do not support your choice to end the life of your child just so that you don't have to provide for them. To deliberately cause death of an innocent human being is not a right. Unless the child acts with an intention to kill the parent, the parent may not use deadly means against them (Disclaimer: Even in self defense, one must not act with the intention to kill - see the principle of double effect)
- blarghyblarg 4y agoThis seems like a Reddit post, more than a Hacker News post.
- lovich 4y agoLegal interactions can be as interesting as complicated code pathways to me, at least. And given this is now new legal grounds given rulings in the past year, it’ll be interesting to see how the novel laws and court cases interact
- somsak2 4y agohttps://archive.is/in3yE https://archive.is/in3yE
- ruffrey 4y agoHabeas fetus?
- kstenerud 4y agoIt's absolutely medieval that they habitually jail people awaiting trial. In civilized countries (for example Germany), detaining someone pending trial is the extreme exception that requires a very good reason. I shudder to think of how many lives are destroyed by this evil practice. After even a month in jail, you've basically been rendered homeless and jobless. Not to mention losing your children if you can't find a guardian for them.
- jeffwask 4y agoThis just scratches the surface on the injustice in the US legal and jail system.
- iLoveOncall 4y agoI guarantee you that even in Germany, someone that has been charged with second degree murder will absolutely go to jail while awaiting for their trial.
- kstenerud 4y agoNo, they don't.
- rootusrootus 4y ago§ 116 StPO (Code of Criminal Procedure) disagrees with that assertion. Remand detention is definitely a thing for people charged with murder.
- kstenerud 4y agoIt's definitely a _possible_ thing, but it's not very common (as I stated before). It's even right there in the statute that there are degrees of curfew, required supervision, house arrest, etc based on the likelihood of the accused interfering with the investigation or absconding (which, once again, is rare). There are also cases where someone is deemed likely to commit another violent offense, but this is VERY rare. The point is that in such civilized countries, the legal system does everything it can to not interfere with someone's life, even when they are accused of a serious crime like murder. Most accused rarely see more than a few hours behind bars before trial, if that.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoThis topic is cherry-picked to provide a platform for venting about sociological views. Let's keep that in mind, and moderate the venom?
- Tao3300 4y ago[flagged]