Police Lieutenant: Cops should have no role in personal health decisions.
The former officer points out that bans don't work and cause needless deaths.
In the wake of the Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, activists have chanted “We won’t go back,” at protests all over the country (also the apt slogan “Fuck the Supreme Court). But as several commentators have pointed out, we’re not going back—we’re going somewhere far worse.
That’s because in the decades since Roe v. Wade became law, the U.S. experienced a transformation of policing and an explosion in mass incarceration. The changes can make you breathless: three strikes and you’re out, mandatory minimums, the drug war, the massive expansion of prosecutorial power, the growth of surveillance technology and institutions, the rise of private prisons, the rise of private prison facilities in public prisons, and the militarization of police. Pre-Roe v. Wade, prosecutors went after abortion providers, but not women, having discovered that juries found the women sympathetic. Today, that’s irrelevant: 97 percent of cases are resolved with plea deals, and by plea deals, I mean a prosecutor offers you a year in prison or 10 years if you go to trial and are found guilty.
Our quest to criminalize everything has long included pregnancy. Women have been prosecuted for using drugs while pregnant, even if the baby wasn’t affected, and charged with crimes for miscarriages that aroused the suspicion of the authorities.
So, even with Roe v. Wade fully intact, pregnant women, particularly poor women and women of color, had their bodies surveilled and policed. 1,700 women were arrested for pregnancy-related “crimes” since the passage of Roe v. Wade.
What happens now? I spoke with Lieutenant Diane Goldstein (Ret.). Executive Director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. The views are her own and do not represent the official position of the organization.
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