We explained that many people who identify as "pro-life" are not in fact concerned about only one life – the life of the "unborn," but rather are pro-lives – concerned about the unborn as well as the pregnant woman, new mother and her other family members. This gives us, and the new Administration many opportunities to find common ground for advancing reproductive and social justice in this Country.

In addition, as a result of NAPW's efforts, recommendations being sent to the new administration by organizations that have historically been primarily concerned with defending the right to choose abortion include recommendations to increase and improve the care of birthing women, pregnant prisoners and pregnant women who love their children but cannot overcome an alcohol or addiction problem faster than, say, Rush Limbaugh. It is so important that the interests of birthing women not be ceded to Feminists for Life -- or any other one organization, one movement, or one party.

We are also pleased that leaders in the birthing rights movement have sent specific recommendations to the new administration, and in doing so acknowledged

the many points of similarity in the reproductive injustices imposed upon women across the entire spectrum of reproductive health, including pregnant women who are incarcerated or have substance abuse problems.

Please know that NAPW is here to help and would be honored to assist the transition team and the new Administration in any way we can.

The event, co-hosted by Gloria Steinem, Caroline's comedy-club owner Caroline Hirsch and Ms. Foundation President and CEO, Sara K. Gould, was an evening of sisterly fun and celebration as prominent comedians, such as Suzanne Whang, host of HGTV's House Hunters, serving as event Emcee, Kristen Schaal, well-known "Senior" Women's Correspondent for the Daily Show, and Marina Franklin, of Chapelle's Show fame, to name a few, engaged the audience with sharp comedy smartly presented in a feminist context. "The need for humor and hope to spur us on," according to Ms. Foundation President Sara K. Gould, "has never been greater."

NAPW is extremely grateful for the support we receive from the Ms. Foundation and for all of the support that enables us to work at both the national and local levels to advance the interests of all pregnant women.

I never had the privilege of meeting Barbara, but knew about some of her work, including her book, The Doctor’s Case Against the Pill. This book and her activism exposed the serious health dangers posed especially by the first generation of the birth control pill. Indeed, Barbara Seaman’s work probably saved my own mother’s life.

It is very likely that he made the right diagnosis because of Barbara’s work bringing the pill’s risks to the attention of everyone, including the doctors who were so avidly and uncritically prescribing it in those days.

One of the things that is so striking and resonant about Barbara Seaman is the fact that her research exposing the risks of the pill required her to challenge not only obvious opposition – the pharmaceutical companies, but also people we would expect to be her natural allies – birth control and sex education advocates. Barbara was challenging the pill’s safety at a time when abortion was still illegal, and people were desperate for a magic bullet that would enable women to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

The truth is hard sometimes.

So much of the work that National Advocates for Pregnant Women does is to challenge prevailing medical myths and junk science –whether those myths involve claims about c-sections and fetal monitors, drug use, or drug treatment. We too find that both opposition and allies sometimes find it hard to believe the scientific evidence, and the medical truths.

Barbara Seaman was of course doing much more than exposing medical risks. She was advancing the radical idea that women should be truly informed about their health and the medications they are prescribed, that doctors and elected officials should listen to the real experts on women’s health issues – the women whose health was at stake. She was working to empower women to act as their own advocates and tirelessly urging them to think critically about their health care and the latest medical miracle.

Last night I learned a lot more about Barbara Seaman. I learned about her life-long friends in the struggle for women’s rights and health, and about new younger friends who she had mentored and encouraged. I learned that she was warm, loving, and generous to her colleagues and allies, constantly making connections and building bridges across generations, ideas, and forms of activism.

It was such an honor to receive this award, and to recognize that I am part of Barbara Seaman’s legacy. My congratulations to Gina Arias, the Program Director for Empowerment and Wellness at Housing Works in Brooklyn, NY, who also won this award. My thanks to the National Women’s Health Network for the award and for all that they do – including allowing NAPW to represent them in many ongoing challenges to the use of junk science and to the prosecution and punishment of pregnant women.

Dear Governor Sarah Palin:

Many Americans agree with your position regarding abortion – they do this as a matter of faith, ethics, personal experience and sometimes politics. We are just wondering though, if you have thought about what would happen if you succeeded in getting your position – that fetuses have a right to life -- established as the law of the land? Did you know that it not only threatens the lives, health and freedom of women who might want or need someday to end their pregnancies, it would also give the government the power to control the lives of women – like you who -- go to term?

Your last pregnancy, the one that has become the topic of widespread discussion and speculation provides an important opportunity to demonstrate how this could be true.

After, Ayesha Madyun’s water broke, she went to the hospital where she hoped and planned to have a vaginal birth. When she didn’t give birth in a time-frame comfortable to her doctors, they argued that she should have a C-section. The doctors asserted that the fetus faced a 50-75 percent chance of infection if not delivered surgically. (Risks of infection are believed by some health care providers to increase with each hour after a woman’s water has broken and she hasn’t delivered).

The court, believing, like you that fetuses have a right to life, 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. The core principle justifying an end to legal abortion in the US provided the same grounds used to deprive this pregnant and laboring woman of her rights to due process, bodily integrity, and physical liberty. When the procedure was done, there was no evidence of infection.

According to the press reports, instead of going straight to a hospital you chose to get on a long airplane flight back to Alaska.

When Pamela Rae Stewart, allegedly, didn’t get to the hospital quickly enough on the day of her delivery, she was arrested in California on the theory that she had violated the rights of her fetus

When Laura Pemberton chose to give birth at home in Florida, a Sheriff came to her house. Doctors believed that she was posing a risk to the life of her unborn child by having a vaginal birth after having had a previous c-section. The doctors were in the process of getting a court- order to force her to have a c-section. The sheriff took Ms. Pemberton into custody during active labor, strapped her legs together and forced her to go to a hospital where an emergency hearing was taking place to determine the rights of her fetus. She was “allowed” to represent herself. A lawyer was appointed for the fetus. This woman, who vehemently opposes abortion, nevertheless believed in her right to evaluate medical risks and benefits to herself and her unborn child. She was forced to have the unnecessary surgery and when she later sued for violations of her civil rights, was told fetal rights outweighed hers.

You chose to continue working throughout your pregnancy – even during your labor. Until 1991, women who worked in high paying blue color jobs that provided health benefits were being fired based on “fetal rights” policies that claimed if the woman became pregnant she would expose the unborn child to workplace health risks. Eventually, the Supreme Court said employers covered by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (the PDA) could not do this. But, millions of American women who work part time or for small employers are not covered by the PDA. If your political position on abortion is accepted – all of these women could be forced to give up their jobs because an employer, family member, or state agent believed it necessary to ensure the health and rights of their unborn child.

Governor Palin, you have led an extraordinary life, balancing work and family, public service and private family obligations. We hope you know though that your freedom relies on exactly the same legal principles that guarantee that American women can choose to have an abortion when they need and want one.

Sixty one percent of women who have abortions are already mothers. Eighty-four percent of these women will be mothers by the time they are in forties. We hope that you, as the proud mother of five beautiful children, will recognize that the issue isn’t abortion – it is ensuring the lives, dignity and freedom of all pregnant women and their families.

Lynn Paltrow
Executive Director
National Advocates for Pregnant Women

By L. Indra Lusero and Lynn M. Paltrow,

Imagine a law declaring that upon becoming pregnant a woman loses her right to bodily integrity, life and liberty. Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately the answer is, not at all. In fact such a law has been proposed in Colorado, a so-called “Human Life Amendment” to the State Constitution. The amendment, number 48 on the November ballot, declares that the term person includes “any human being from the moment of fertilization” and would give fetuses “inalienable rights, equality of justice and due process of law.”

According to the Kristi Burton, the spokeswoman for the campaign in favor of this amendment, the campaign is about “the power of truth.” The truth is, however, that this amendment will be devastating to pregnant women and dangerous for both maternal and fetal health.

Constitutional law ensures that people, including pregnant women, have the right to make the own health care decisions. Yet, cases from Colorado and across the country make it clear that if fetuses are recognized as legal persons, pregnant women could very likely lose these constitutionally protected rights. That’s because laws like the “Human Life Amendment” enable the state to intervene in pregnant women’s lives in ways that are dangerous to both pregnant women and their children.

For example, in the 1980s a Colorado woman was forced to have a Cesarean section based on claims of fetal rights. Relying on notoriously inaccurate fetal monitors, doctors concluded that the fetus was in distress and recommended that the woman have a C-section. The woman refused. Even though a psychiatrist examined the pregnant woman and concluded that she was competent to make medical decisions, the hospital attorneys sought a court order mandating the treatment. In a bedside hearing, a Denver Juvenile Court judge declared the fetus a dependent and neglected child, and ordered the Cesarean section. The newborn was not in the dire shape predicted by the fetal monitoring and it was not clear that this major surgery was necessary.

In Washington, DC, doctors sought a court order to force Ayesha Madyun to have a C-section, claiming the fetus faced a 50-75 percent chance of infection if not delivered surgically. The court 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.

Twenty-seven years old and 25 weeks pregnant, Angela Carder, became critically ill. She, her family and her attending physicians agreed on treatment designed to keep her alive for as long as possible. Nevertheless, the hospital called an emergency hearing, and based on claims of fetal rights, ordered a Cesarean section, despite the fact that it could kill Ms. Carder. The surgery was performed, the pre-term infant survived for only two hours and Ms. Carder died two days later with the c-section listed as a contributing factor.

In each of these cases, the state intervention was based on the claim that fetuses had separate legal rights — exactly the ones the Amendment would establish in Colorado. In none of these cases did the forced interventions or deprivations of liberty actually protect mothers or babies.

Many women, including those who oppose abortion, believe they should not lose their rights to make medical decisions for themselves and their children because they are pregnant or are in labor. If the amendment passes, Colorado’s juvenile courts will have jurisdiction whenever doctors or family members disagree with a pregnant woman’s medical decisions. As the cases discussed make clear, women’s right to bodily integrity, due process, and even life itself will disappear in the face of fetal personhood claims.

To oppose the recognition of fetal personhood as a matter of state constitutional law is not to deny the value of potential life as matter of religious belief, emotional conviction or personal experience. Rather, it is to recognize that re-writing the state Constitution to include human beings from the moment of fertilization is to exclude women from the moment they become pregnant.

L. Indra Lusero is a J.D. candidate at the University of Denver School of Law and Lynn M. Paltrow, J.D. is the executive director for the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

http://www.vaildaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080806/EDITS/484969716/1023&parentprofile=1065&template=printart

This Communications Connection Teleconference and Webinar is sponsored by RH Reality Check. The Communications Connection web forum series is a service for the domestic reproductive rights community from DDB Issues & Advocacy, in partnership with RH Reality Check. It is generously supported by the David & Lucile Packard Foundation.

I will be speaking about the fact that many people in the U.S. work to protect the rights and dignity of pregnant women; however, the issue of abortion is so divisive that many of these advocates do not work together or even speak to one another.

All of them, from pro-choice advocates defending the right to choose abortion to birthing rights advocates pushing for compassionate, quality prenatal care, advocate for the same women, whatever their position on abortion.

Both groups struggle with policies undermining women's health and wellbeing. Both recognize women's need for support and information. Both are hurt by legislation so focused on restricting abortion that it overlooks pregnant women's other numerous health concerns.

Despite their differences, pro-choice and birthing rights advocates have begun to come together over their shared commitment to the health and rights of pregnant women. This talk will address progress towards expanding the Reproductive Justice base, legislative and policy proposals reflecting shared values and "pro-active" legislative possibilities, recent court decisions demonstrating connections between abortion and birthing activists, and the threat to all by measures like Colorado's ballot initiative conferring personhood at conception under the state constitution.

Please sign up and join us on August 7, 2008.

Awakened by late-night pounding and his doorbell ringing, Palmdale resident Jesus Bejarano found a social worker and two sheriff's deputies demanding he turn over his 20-month-old daughter, Kelly.

The social worker said Bejarano's 29-year-old wife, Cheila Herrera, had tested positive for amphetamines and PCP at Antelope Valley Hospital after giving birth to the couple's son a week earlier.
Their son, Jesse, who was born prematurely and was still at the hospital, had already been placed in protective custody.

Experts say the case highlights widespread problems with California's system of drug-testing pregnant mothers, using urine-screening tests that produce false-positives up to 70percent of the time, and inconsistent compliance by hospitals with a state law designed to regulate the process.

Sidebar stories include: Seized baby dies in foster care; False Positives are common in drug tests on new moms;; and Hospital staff more likely to screen minority mothers.

NAPW is proud to be quoted in the story and to have played a large role, along with many of our allies, in getting these counterproductive, discriminatory, and costly policies exposed.

I am thrilled to announce that we moved to new space that will allow us to build appropriate infrastructure including fully networked systems. Our new offices are located at 15 West 36th Street Suite 901, New York, New York 10018. Mail from the old office will be forwarded to the new one (in case you were worried).

There are many things about the office and location that are auspicious. . .

We will be spending the next few weeks getting settled, taking some time to get unpacked and figuring out what else we need to make the office work efficiently. We will also be getting acquainted with our new summer interns. Welcome! Oh, and by the way -- we don't have enough chairs for them all. Donations will be gratefully accepted. If you "endow" a chair -- we will put your name on it forever!

Specifically the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that Regina McKnight did not have a fair trial when she was convicted in 2001 for homicide by child abuse. Through this conviction she became the first woman in South Carolina to be convicted of homicide by child abuse as a result of suffering an unintentional stillbirth.

McKnight was arrested in 1999, several months after she experienced a stillbirth at Conway Hospital. McKnight’s conviction was based on the jury’s acceptance of the scientifically unsupported claim that her cocaine use caused the stillbirth. McKnight had no prior arrest history and even prosecutors agreed that she had no intention of harming the fetus or losing the pregnancy. Nevertheless, upon conviction she was given a twenty-year sentence, suspended to twelve years in prison with no chance for parole. She was projected to be released in 2010.

The medical community has strongly opposed McKnight’s prosecution and conviction. From the beginning, leading South Carolina and national medical, public health, and child welfare organizations and experts have opposed the prosecution and conviction. These organizations—represented by us-- the National Advocates for Pregnant Women and the Drug Policy Alliance, with South Carolina counsel Susan Dunn included the South Carolina Medical Association, the South Carolina Nurses Association, the South Carolina Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors, and the South Carolina Coalition for Healthy Families argued in an amicus (friend of the court) brief argued that women do not lose their rights to a fair trial upon becoming pregnant and challenged the state’s evidence that cocaine use or anything else that McKnight did or did not do caused the stillbirth.

Today’s ruling focused on the question of whether Ms. McKnight received a fair trial and concluded that Ms. McKnight's counsel was "ineffective in her preparation of McKnight's defense through expert testimony and cross-examination." The decision also indicated that the medical and scientific basis for her prosecution and that of other women in the state is based on outdated and inaccurate medical information.

“Significantly, the opinion acknowledges that current research simply does not support the assumption that prenatal exposure to cocaine results in harm to the fetus, and the opinion makes clear that it is certainly 'no more harmful to a fetus than nicotine use, poor nutrition, lack of prenatal care, or other conditions commonly associated with the urban poor.'” said Susan K. Dunn, South Carolina co-counsel for amicus. “This decision puts Solicitors [prosecutors] across the state on notice that they must actually prove that an illegal drug has risked or caused harm—not simply rely on prejudice and medical misinformation.”

This ruling addressed a petition filed on behalf of McKnight seeking a judicial review to determine whether the person is imprisoned lawfully or should be released from custody. The petition must show that the court ordered the imprisonment based on a legal or factual error. In McKnight, the factual error was accepting a causal link between McKnight’s cocaine use and her stillbirth. The Court held that the legal errors were not calling medical expert as witnesses who could refute that link, failing to investigate the medical evidence the state's witnesses relied on and that was based on outdated scientific studies, and failing to challenge the court's confusing and contradictory explanations to the jury of what "intent" Ms. McKnight had to have.

“Ms. McKnight is one of more than 500 women in South Carolina who experience stillbirths each year, and in many of those cases, medicine just can’t determine the cause,” said Brandi Parrish, coordinator of the South Carolina Coalition for Healthy Families and NAPW local ally. “It is a tragedy that Ms. McKnight has been in prison for nearly eight years for a crime she did not commit. Families in South Carolina are not helped by treating stillbirths as crimes and wasting hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to imprison innocent mothers.”

The medical and public health groups also raised concerns about the consequences of South Carolina’s policy of arresting pregnant women who experience drug problems. In their brief, they cited the fact that threatening pregnant women with jail time deters them from seeking prenatal care and other vital services, as has been the case in South Carolina since the Whitner ruling in 1997 that originally permitted prosecution of pregnant women under state child endangerment charges.

Ms. McKnight is represented on the petition by C. Rauch Wise of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina Foundation, Inc., and Matthew Hersh and Julie Carpenter of the law firm Jenner & Block for the DKT Liberty Project.

There are many reasons to oppose the prosecution of pregnant women and new mothers. These prosecutions, if upheld would create legal precedent for the finding that women, upon becoming pregnant lose their civil and human rights. If a pregnant woman can be viewed as a child abuser before she ever gives birth, or as a murderer because she can not guarantee a healthy birth outcome, she ceases to exist as a full human being and full rights bearing citizen. Here is just one small example. Very often in these cases it is assumed that women should be able to stop their drug use when they become pregnant. But because pregnant women are no less human than other people, they too become addicted to drugs . This means that the desire and intent to stop is very often not enough to overcome the addiction. Pregnant women no less than people like Rush Limbaugh deserve compassion and treatment as they struggle with addiction not the presumption that they can simply stop. If pregnant women fail to overcome fully an addiction in the short term of pregnancy, their continued use is taken by some as evidence of a desire to harm their future child -- rather than as evidence that they are human beings and struggling like other people with the physiological and psychological ramifications of addiction.

Other reasons to oppose the prosecution of pregnant women include the fact that incarcerating pregnant women in prisons and jails that do not provide adequate health care and that permit shackling of women who are pregnant and in labor will not help anyone. Moreover, arguing about prosecutions of pregnant women keeps us from talking about the lack of appropriate family drug treatment for pregnant women and parents, lack of universal health care in general, and lack of commitment to our country's mothers and children.

Oh, and by the way, NAPW is working with local attorneys and advocacy organizations to challenge these prosecutions.

Want to do something to help stop these cases? Send a letter/email about how these prosecutions are bad for both maternal and fetal health to: The Alabama Prosecutor: Covington County DA Greg Gambrill at gambrilg@alaweb.com; and to Alabama Governor Bob Riley, Attorney General Troy King, and Donald E. Williamson, MD at the Alabama Department of Health.

While Roe is vulnerable, few recognize there are already laws in place that, in effect, declare that women,
upon becoming pregnant, lose their civil and human rights. More than 30 states and the federal
government have "unborn victims of violence" acts, fetal homicide, and other laws that treat fetuses as
separate persons in some circumstances. This year, Colorado and several other states may have ballot
measures designed to grant the status of legal personhood to the unborn under their state constitutions.
Fetal-rights laws generally claim to protect pregnant women from third-party attacks, yet are primarily
used to justify actions that deprive women of the right to informed consent, bodily integrity and life itself.
In the name of fetal rights and protection, pregnant women have been forced to have unnecessary
C-sections (in one case both the woman and fetus died), been civilly committed to mental hospitals and
drug treatment programs, been arrested as child abusers for using marijuana to cope with morning
sickness, and been charged and, in some cases, convicted of murder for suffering an unintentional
stillbirth. These fetal-rights laws do not make abortion itself illegal. But make no mistake: If Roe is
overturned, these laws mean women who have abortions will be charged with murder, not illegal
abortion. Moreover, if the unborn are legal persons, then states already have the means, through their
civil commitment and child protection laws, to police and imprison women to ensure that they do not
have abortions. It should be clear, then, that those who defend the right to choose an abortion and those
who defend a woman's right to mother-friendly childbirth must unite to defend women's human rights --
not just Roe or reproductive rights.
Lynn

For a flier with full event information and panelists' bios, please click here.

Recently, in State v. Hernandez, the state prosecuted an Oklahoma City woman for murder after suffering a stillbirth and testing positive for methamphetamine — despite a lack of medical evidence connecting the two events and the disapproval of local and national medical and public health associations and individuals. Hear renowned local and national experts in the fields of medicine and social work separate myth from fact regarding drug use and pregnancy, discuss the implications of the case for the health and well-being of Oklahoma’s women and babies, and map out strategies for effective and appropriate responses to addiction and pregnancy.

The keynote was Dr. Barry Lester, the Director of the Brown University Center for Study of Children at Risk, while the other panelists included four other Oklahoma-based medical/public health experts, including the state representative to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a woman who has been personally affected by substance abuse, the drug war, prison, and her experiences with the criminal justice system.

To see Dr. Lester's entire PowerPoint presentation, click here and go to the bottom link, labeled "Oklahoma City Forum."

Event sponsors included:

• Drew Edmondson, Oklahoma State Attorney General
• Oklahoma County Medical Society
• Oklahoma Department of Human Services
• Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services
• Oklahoma Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition
• Oklahoma Nurses Association
• Oklahoma State Medical Association
• National Association of Social Workers, OK

Other panelists (and NAPW allies!) will include:

• Elan McAllister, President & Co-Founder, Choices in Childbirth

• Debra Pascali-Bonaro, B. Ed., CD (DONA), LCCE, Pres. of MotherLove, Inc.

• Patricia Burkhardt, CNM, DrPH, NYU College of Nursing Midwifery
Program Coordinator

• Christie Craigie-Carter, International Cesarean Awareness Network, Inc.

• George M. Mussalli, MD, FACOG, St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan

• Mary Barr, Executive Director, Conextions Inc.

The federal "partial-birth" abortion ban has grave implications for all pregnant women, not only those seeking to end pregnancies.

By Lynn M. Paltrow
 American Prospect Web Exclusive: 04.19.07

[Last week] 

the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the first federal law that bans an abortion procedure for all women and all doctors in all states. By holding that Congress's interest in "preserving and promoting fetal life" trumps both scientific evidence and the health of pregnant women, the newly reconfigured Supreme Court overturned the opinions of three lower federal courts and its own precedent. While Justice Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, claims that the "act expresses respect for the dignity of human life," the decision expressly devalues the women who give that life.

But in the wake of yesterday's ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart, there is now little to stand in the way of a federal law banning abortions everywhere if Roe is overturned. In other words, abortion is not really a question of states' rights, but rather of controlling all pregnant women regardless of the state in which they live.

The Court also made clear that when it comes to women's health, Congress need not legislate based on scientific or medical evidence. The leading medical experts and the lower federal courts have found that the now-banned procedure is the safest option for some women, and that it is significantly safer for these women than other abortion techniques. And yet, the Supreme Court decision acknowledges, Congress ignored these factual conclusions. Yesterday's decision marks a radical departure from previous Supreme Court abortion decisions that required law-makers to legislate based on facts not politics.

Indeed, the ruling effectively reverses more than 30 years of precedent requiring that laws regulating abortion ensure protection not only of the woman's life, but also her health. In the majority opinion, Kennedy makes clear that the most critical reason for upholding the law is to express the government's interest in the value of fetal life regardless of what that may mean for pregnant women.

According to Kennedy, failing to reverse the unanimous rulings of three lower federal courts, all finding the abortion ban unconstitutional, would risk repudiating "that the government has a legitimate and substantial interest in preserving and promoting fetal life."

The decision thus has grave implications for all pregnant women, not only those seeking to end pregnancies. If the government can choose to advance fetal interests over the pregnant woman's health in the context of abortion, why can't so-called "fetal rights" prevail in the context of birth?

In fact, this argument is already being used to justify court-ordered Cesarean sections in cases where physicians believe that a c-section will prove more beneficial to the fetus (this despite the fact that c-sections constitute major surgery and pose increased health risks to the pregnant woman and in some cases the fetus as well). True, most courts so far rule that such interventions unconstitutionally strip women of their civil and human rights, including bodily integrity, informed medical decision-making, liberty, and, in one case, life itself. In that case, later reversed by an appellate court, both the woman and her baby died after a forced c-section ordered to protect fetal life.

But at least one federal court has said that sending police to a woman's home, taking her into custody while in active labor and near delivery, strapping her legs together and her body down to transport her against her will to a hospital, and then forcing her, without access to counsel or court review to undergo major surgery constituted no violation of her civil rights at all. The rationale? If the state can limit women's access to abortions after viability, it can subject her to the lesser state intrusion of insisting on one method of delivery over another.

There are other implications to upholding laws that award the fetus separate and greater rights than those of the woman. Comments by Kennedy in a concurring opinion in another Supreme Court case, Ferguson, suggest that he would have no objections to advancing fetal interests by permitting states to "impose punishment" on a woman who even "risks" causing harm to the fetus. In that case, the purported risks were those created by low-income pregnant women who used illegal drugs and who had no access to appropriate drug treatment despite seeking health care.

In his majority opinion, Kennedy worries that permitting a procedure that can advance the health interests of a pregnant woman is in fact something "laden with the power to devalue human life." My worry is that this case not only marks a significant attack on the rights and health of all pregnant women, it also reinforces government policies that value human life only when it involves limiting women's access to reproductive health care.

Yesterday President Bush said, "The Supreme Court's decision is an affirmation of the progress we have made over the past six years in protecting human dignity and upholding the sanctity of life. We will continue to work for the day when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law."

And yet the Bush administration is actively supporting policies to limit poor children's access to state child health insurance programs. In short, the Court's decision in Gonzales v. Carhart -- and Bush's professed support for it -- reinforces the sense, once again, that only the unborn deserve protection in this country. Not by ensuring universal health care, paid maternity leave, or an end to workplace pregnancy discrimination -- only by restricting pregnant women's access to health care.

Lynn M. Paltrow, Esq., is the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women.