Tag Archives: Huffington Post

controversies, healthcare, law, true crime

Florida attorney argues that fetus is being unjustly jailed…

You know how some people in certain states think that developing fetuses should have all of the rights to personhood that already born people get? I’ve noticed that some people have been doing their best to get over, based on that line of thinking. Personally, I have no qualms with it, since it offends me that some people value the unborn over the already born.

In fact, I laughed pretty hard last summer, when I read about, Brandy Bottone, a pregnant woman in Texas who contested a ticket for driving alone in the HOV lane. According to her, she wasn’t actually alone. I see that Brandy Bottone’s first ticket was dismissed, but then she got another one the following month for the same offense. The cop recognized her and asked when she was having her baby. She told him the baby girl would be born the next day, as he handed her another ticket.

When this situation first occurred, Bottone reportedly wasn’t trying to make a political statement. But then the question of what constitutes actual personhood really did make her wonder. When Roe v. Wade was overturned and Texas adopted very strict laws against abortion, some unintended consequences arose. One of them has to do with crime and punishment. Whether it’s a woman trying to get out of a moving violation citation, or a woman who has been accused of murder trying to get out of jail, denying pregnant people the right to bodily autonomy and acting like a developing fetus has rights means that there will be some new wrinkles in the laws.

Last night, I read another story addressing this phenomenon, when I stumbled across a Huffington Post article about Natalia Harrell, a pregnant woman in Florida who has been jailed since last July. Attorney William Norris filed an emergency petition last week on behalf of his client, Ms. Harrell’s fetus, currently at eight months gestation. Mr. Norris claims the Miami-Dade Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has not provided Ms. Harrell with adequate prenatal care.

Mr. Norris told NBC Miami:

“An unborn child is a person. A person has constitutional rights and one of them is the right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law.”

“I am asserting the right of someone who is a person who has not been considered in the decision to incarcerate his mother.”

According to the Huff Post article I read, Ms. Harrell has not seen an OB-GYN since October. Norris asserts that the corrections department has not provided sufficient prenatal vitamins or nutritious food. Ms. Harrell has not been taken to scheduled doctor’s appointments, and at one point, the pregnant woman was forced to sit in a 100-degree transport van that lacked air conditioning. Norris filed the petition when he was contacted by the baby’s father, who was concerned about his unborn child’s well-being.

Ms. Harrell has been incarcerated without bond since last summer. She’s accused of “fatally shooting fellow Uber passenger Gladys Yvette Borcela amid an argument after a night out in Miami.” Harrell’s trial is set to begin in April; she has pleaded not guilty.

It should come as no surprise that Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has argued for the petition’s dismissal on the grounds that there is no evidence that Ms. Harrell has been mistreated. Officials at the jail have also “disputed the allegations about its care for the inmate, saying in a statement that it’s ‘committed to ensuring all inmates receive professional, timely medical care and all appropriate treatment.'”

However, Mr. Norris reminds us that Ms. Harrell has not yet been convicted of a crime; she has only been accused. He also adds, “she has a stand-your-ground immunity defense that her criminal attorney is going to assert. So her conviction is by no means certain.”

I am not familiar with the incident that put Ms. Harrell behind bars, however, I do think that if states are going to declare the unborn as persons with personhood, Norris’s petition ought to be examined. I know that on the surface of this case, some people will laugh. They want to grant rights to the unborn, as long as it suits their highly controlling and anti-woman agenda. But both the ticket situation and the more serious murder accusation highlight the unintended consequences that have come up since abortion has been pretty much outlawed in some places. An astute attorney is going to challenge the new laws, and rightfully so.

I do, however, have some concern that this kind of legal maneuvering could potentially backfire. More than once, I’ve written about how pregnant people inherently have different civil rights than non-pregnant people have. For instance, if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, and drinking a beer in a restaurant, there is a chance someone might call the police on you.

A few years ago, I blogged about Marshae Jones, a pregnant woman who was jailed because she got in a fight that resulted in her being shot in the stomach. Her baby did not survive. Police reasoned that since the woman hadn’t kept herself out of harm’s way, she was responsible for the unborn fetus’s death. The woman who actually did the shooting, Ebony Jemison, was not indicted; therefore, she remained free, while Jones was jailed and later released on a $50,000 bond. The charges against Jones were eventually dropped, but still, it’s pretty scary how easy it is for pregnant people to wind up incarcerated. And there have been other disturbing cases of women who have been incarcerated because of miscarriage after they’d allegedly done something that put the unborn fetus at risk.

So… what concerns me about Ms. Harrell’s case is that besides the murder charge, she might also be charged with endangering the welfare of a minor, child abuse, or something of that nature. Judging by the comments by MEN on the Facebook post about this story, I can see that a lot of MEN think that Ms. Harrell shouldn’t have any rights because she’s an irresponsible woman who put her unborn baby in danger. But if she’s been jailed since last July, that means she might not have even realized that she was pregnant! Moreover– I must reiterate– she has not yet been convicted. She has only been accused.

I think it’s unsettling to see how gleeful some people are to see others put behind bars. There are so many Americans who seem to rejoice in watching certain people lose their liberties. Personally, I don’t like to think of people rotting in prison, especially when they’re pregnant. Jails and prisons are not good places for anyone to be– especially those who are gestating a baby.

Jessica Kent, a popular YouTube v-logger, has heartbreakingly spelled out what it was like for her to be pregnant when she was in an Arkansas prison. She didn’t know she was pregnant when she got arrested. If you are interested in that subject, I highly recommend watching these two videos…

Jail and prison are not good places to be if you’re pregnant.
This video is HEARTBREAKING.

And again… lots of pro-life MEN, who seem to be very misogynistic and lacking in understanding about why a woman might want or need to have an abortion, are commenting on Ms. Harrell’s story. They’re fine with declaring the unborn a “person with rights” when it comes to putting pregnant women behind bars, but they don’t like to see the same logic used to get women out of legal trouble or released from incarceration. And I’d wager that the VAST MAJORITY of them want and expect the right to privacy when it comes to making their own medical decisions, right?

One particularly prolific Facebook commenter– a man named Nicholas– clearly thinks that late term abortions are very commonly done on a whim. That simply isn’t true; late term abortions are actually very rare. There aren’t very many doctors who will do late term abortions, and the ones who will do them are typically doing them in situations involving tragic medical complications that are no one else’s business. They are very expensive and traumatic, and they involve actually giving birth. So no, they aren’t done for “convenience”.

Moreover, if legislators want to grant rights to the unborn, then they should also make sure that pregnant people have all they need to give birth to healthy babies and be able to raise healthy children. That means access to nutritious food, competent medical care, and adequate rest and exercise for ALL pregnant people– including those who are behind bars. It sounds like Mr. Norris is arguing that his client, by virtue of still being in utero, is being denied his rights as a person– albeit an unborn one at eight months gestation. So yes, it’s good that someone is having a look at this dilemma.

While I don’t know the specifics of Ms. Harrell’s case or whether or not she’s guilty, and I do worry that this case could backfire, I also think that double standards are bullshit. If you want to incarcerate people for crimes against the unborn because they have personhood, you must also consider that the innocent unborn should not be incarcerated for crimes committed by their mothers. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this case.


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“I know just how you feel…” uh, no you don’t.

This morning, a friend and former co-worker shared an interesting article from the Huffington Post about how to talk to a grieving friend. The author of the piece, Celeste Headlee, writes that one of her friends had lost her dad. Headlee found her sitting on a bench outside their workplace. She was staring at the horizon, not moving or speaking. Headlee wanted to help, but didn’t know what to say. She thought about how she’d grown up without her father. He’d drowned in a submarine when Headlee was nine months old. Even though she’d never known him, she had grieved for him.

Headlee thought she was commiserating and sympathizing with her friend, letting her know that she “knew how she felt”. But when she was finished speaking, her friend snapped, “Okay, Celeste, you win. You never had a dad, and I at least got to spend 30 years with mine. You had it worse. I guess I shouldn’t be so upset that my dad just died.”

Headlee was taken aback by her friend’s reaction. It hadn’t occurred to her that she had flipped the situation to be about her. She thought she was showing solidarity in relating that story about her dad. But Headlee’s friend was grieving and raw with pain. She didn’t want to hear about her friend’s grief. At that time, she needed love and support and someone who was actively listening to her and responding with kindness.

People do this all the time. I’ve done it. I’m sure you’ve done it. You hear someone talking about how they’re in pain because of some kind of misfortune. Instead of simply listening quietly and offering support, many of us feel compelled to say “me too”. There is a time for “me too” and there is a time when “me too” isn’t appropriate. If someone is looking for love and support, they don’t need to hear about how you’ve been hurt, too. At least not at that moment. Maybe later, you can have a talk about your mutual experiences. But when the pain is raw and the loss is new, it’s better to save that sob story for later. It can seem like one-upmanship, or even worse, flat out narcissism.

Still, I understand how hard it is to save that story. I like to tell stories myself. I will admit that in the months since we lost Zane, I’ve responded to posts about others who have also lost their dogs to lymphoma by commiserating. Cancer sucks. Canine cancer really sucks. I still miss Zane every day, although I’m not grieving like I was in September. What I usually try to do is express condolences, wishes for peace and comfort, and support first, even if I slip in a “commiserating” comment last. But after reading this article, I think maybe the best thing to say is simply “I’m sorry. How can I help?” or “If you need anything, let me know.”

No matter what, though, I try very hard never to say “I know just how you feel.” Some time ago, I realized that it’s impossible for me to know how another person feels or what they’re thinking, no matter what. I only know how I feel and what I think. I can only speak for myself. I don’t even know if the person next to me sees the color blue the same way I do. I don’t know if they hear music the way I do. I don’t know if they experience a cool breeze or a hot shower the way I do. I can assume they do, but I don’t know for sure. I can only guess.

Even if someone seems overwhelmed by excitement or completely down in the dumps due to some kind of loss, I truly don’t know how they feel. I know how I might feel in that situation, but even then, if I’m not experiencing it and haven’t lived their lives, I really don’t know. I know how I felt when my father died, but I don’t know how my cousin felt when her dad/my uncle died. My uncle and I got along better than my dad and I did, and I was a bit sadder about his death than I was when my dad died. It’s not that I wished death on my father, although in many ways, I think it was a blessing. My dad had Lewy Body Dementia, which is a horrible, progressive, cruel disease that robs people of their sanity and independence. My cousin’s dad/my uncle had a major stroke and was relatively active and independent until two weeks before he died.

Which death was “sadder”? I guess it depends on how you look at it. My dad lived longer, but his quality of life wasn’t as good. He spent the last six years of his life totally dependent on my mom. My uncle was out and about when he had his stroke. Death came for him in a matter of two weeks. For my dad, it was years. Maybe it’s sadder that my uncle died the way he did because it was so sudden. A year ago, he was still alive and there was no reason to believe he’d be dead within seven months. With my dad, death was also kind of sudden. He’d had emergency gallbladder surgery and was unable to recover from the anesthesia. If he hadn’t had the surgery, he probably still would have died because the gallbladder was very inflamed and infected. Maybe death would have come sooner and been more painful. Either way, it was bound to happen.

My cousin was a total “Daddy’s girl” and she was very close to her dad. My dad and I weren’t very close, even though I believe we loved each other. I cried only a little when he died, and if I’m honest, I don’t miss him much. He and I fought a lot, and he was frequently abusive to me. I know he was a basically good person, but he had a lot of demons and, unfortunately, I got the brunt of the consequences related to his untreated depression, alcoholism, and PTSD. My uncle, on the other hand, was funny, laid back, and for the most part, just a wonderful, generous guy. It helped that I didn’t live with him, either. If I had lived with him, maybe I’d feel differently… although I kind of doubt that. He was my favorite relative, and I think we had a special relationship. Still, it was not the same relationship he had with my cousin, and my cousin and I are totally different people. I don’t know how she feels about his death. She doesn’t know how I feel about his death, or my dad’s death.

My three older sisters probably feel differently about our dad. I have a feeling my eldest sister, especially, took his death hard. I think she was my dad’s favorite daughter. They did things together, spent time together, had the longest time together as father and daughter, and I know he admired and respected her for being successful and beautiful. I don’t think they fought much, mainly because she was the firstborn and strived for perfection in all things. Also, she moved out of the house when she was about seventeen and went to the Royal Ballet School in London. I, on the other hand, boomeranged back to my parents’ house until I was 27 years old and could finally move out for good. Even though we’re sisters, I don’t know how she feels about our dad. I only know how I feel.

Anyway… I think after reading that article, I’m going to try harder to be supportive and a good listener when someone is grieving or otherwise in pain. At the same time, I think there’s something to be said for those who try to be kind when someone is in pain. Even if they say the wrong thing, at least they tried. Unless it’s clear that they meant to be hurtful or a clod, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. The only comment I got after Zane died that really hurt was when one of my relatives told me that Zane was now “in a better place”. While I know some people say that to mean he’s gone on to a better world, this particular relative has told me more than once that she’s an atheist, so she probably doesn’t believe in “better places”. And either way, saying that means she thinks that Zane is better off dead than with his loving family… which really is kind of shitty, even if it happens to be true. But this relative also told me, just after we lost our paternal grandmother, that she’d always suspected that I wasn’t my father’s biological daughter (which 23andme has now proven that I am). So I don’t go to her for comfort, anyway.

The most comforting beings in my life are my husband, who always knows what to say and do, and my dog(s), who also always know what to say and do. And even beyond the grave, Bill and I get comfort from Zane, too. In fact, Bill dreamt about him this morning… sitting in our living room in his young, healthy state, wagging his tail, shaking off, and letting Bill pet him before he awoke. Maybe he is in a better place now…. but he’s still with us in our hearts and dreams. But no one else knows how I feel about him, not even Bill.

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