Katha Pollit follows up on the Bei Bei Shuai case and it’s depressing:
Bad news came from Indiana on May 11. The state Supreme Court has refused to review charges of attempted feticide and murder against Bei Bei Shuai. Just before Christmas 2010, Shuai, who was thirty-three weeks pregnant, attempted to kill herself by consuming rat poison after her boyfriend, father of the baby, abruptly announced he was married and abandoned her to return to his family. Rushed to the hospital, she had a Caesarean section, but her newborn daughter died after a few days of life. (Here’s my column on the case.) Despite amicus briefs from eighty respected experts and relevant medical and social organizations—the state of Indiana, for reasons best known to itself, will do its best to send Shuai to prison. Potential sentence: forty-five to sixty-five years.
It’s becoming more and more obvious that we need to find a better way to protect fetuses from the monsters who gestate them inside their bodies. They obviously are far too flawed and human, with all sorts of so-called “problems of their own” to be trusted.
Pollit says suicide is the 5th leading cause of death for pregnant women, which means many innocent victims are at the mercy of these savages. (Sure, they are awash in strong hormones that affect their emotions, but that’s not the fetuses fault, now is it? …. oh wait.. never mind.) Whatever the reason for their failure to be perfect, these “mothers” are going to need much, much more supervision and control lest this sort of thing happen to other valuable persons who are imprisoned inside the wombs of such weak vessels. (What in the world was God thinking putting our innocent babies inside such creatures in the first place?)
Seriously, this is really yet another step in the long term plan to outlaw abortion. As Pollit explains, it goes all the way back to a 1979 law, which, as she puts it,”seemed like a good idea to a lot of well-meaning people.” (They always do, don’t they?)
The state law under which Shuai is charged was passed in 1979, as part of a post-Roe wave of “unborn victims of violence” laws that made the fetus a separate victim in crimes against pregnant women that caused her to miscarry or die—for example, attacks by muggers or abusive partners. Pushed by abortion opponents as part of their strategy of building up the legal “personhood” of the fetus, it nonetheless seemed like a good idea to a lot of well-meaning people: shouldn’t there be some acknowledgment that assaulting a woman and causing her to miscarry was a special kind of awful? According to Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, which has taken on Shuai’s case, the legislative record clearly shows that lawmakers did not intend for the Indiana law to target pregnant women themselves. But that is what is happening.
What you can do:
Sign the petition to Free Bei Bei Shuai.
Donate to National Advocates for Pregnant Women and help fund Shuai’s defense.
Watch a video of Bei Bei Shuai speaking about her case here.
Read Pollit’s original column about Bei Bei Shuai.